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The Cabinet of Ministers has approved three contracts worth a combined Rs. 3,334.28 million, excluding VAT and other applicable taxes, for the rehabilitation and improvement of road infrastructure damaged by Cyclone Ditwah.

Addressing the weekly post-Cabinet media briefing yesterday, Cabinet Spokesman and Minister Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa said contractors were selected through the National Competitive Procurement procedure, following the evaluation of bids and recommendations of the High-Level Procurement Committee.

Accordingly, a contract worth Rs. 852.83 million has been awarded to ELS Construction Ltd. for the rehabilitation and improvement of sections of the Gampola-Nawalapitiya (B013) Road, from kilometre 8+500 to 16+300, and the Ulapane-Pussellawa (B431) Road, from kilometre 0+000 to 6+440. The contract period is four months.

A second contract worth Rs. 1,516.08 million has been awarded to Jayasinghe Contractors Ltd. for the rehabilitation and improvement of a 16.77 km section of the B461 Road, from kilometre 11+000 to 27+700.

He said the project also includes improvements to drainage efficiency and the construction of retaining walls along the section from kilometre 27+700 to 30+800. The contract period is two months.

The third contract, valued at Rs. 965.37 million, has been awarded to RR Construction Ltd. for the rehabilitation and improvement of a 15 km section of the Katugastota-Madawala-Bambaralla (B205) Road, from the 19th to the 34th kilometre.

‘It also covers repairs to damaged road sections and areas affected by slope collapses along a four-kilometre stretch of the Wattegama-Kandenuwara-Wariyapola Road, between the first and fifth kilometres. The contract period is three months.’

The proposal to this effect was submitted by the Transport, Highways and Urban Development Minister Bimal Rathnayake.

UN Women yesterday launched a new report ‘Beyond Numbers’ examining the impact and lessons of Sri Lanka’s 25% local government quota, bringing together government representatives, political actors, women leaders, civil society, development partners and the United Nations to discuss the future of women’s political participation and leadership in Sri Lanka.

Launched at a strategic dialogue convened by UN Women Sri Lanka, the report brought together government representatives, political actors, women leaders, civil society, development partners, academia and the United Nations to reflect on the future of women’s political participation and leadership in Sri Lanka.

The report was launched at a strategic dialogue convened by UN Women Sri Lanka, providing a platform to reflect on the gains achieved through the quota, the barriers that continue to limit women’s participation and leadership, and the reforms needed to accelerate progress across local, provincial and national levels.

Sri Lanka has made important gains in women’s political representation over the past several years, including through the introduction of the local government quota and increased representation in Parliament. Yet progress towards equal participation and influence remains uneven. Women continue to face barriers including party gatekeeping, limited access to campaign resources and political networks, unequal opportunities for leadership within party structures, harassment and violence, and persistent social norms that question women’s legitimacy as political leaders.

The report highlights the significance of the 25% quota for women’s seats in local government, which increased women’s representation in local authorities from less than 2% to nearly 23%. Beyond increasing numbers, the quota provides important lessons on what enables women to enter political institutions, the extent to which greater representation translates into influence, and where structural barriers continue to impede women’s leadership and participation.

UN Women Sri Lanka Head of Office Ramaaya Salgado said: ‘While increasing representation is important, the next challenge is ensuring that representation translates into meaningful participation, influence and leadership. The experiences of women who entered local government through the quota offer valuable insights into what works, what continues to limit women’s political participation, and what reforms are needed to create a more inclusive political landscape.’

Discussions during the dialogue explored the relationship between representation, influence and political leadership; the implications of the quota experience for future reforms at provincial and national levels; and the institutional, political and social changes needed to strengthen pathways for women’s leadership. Participants also examined issues related to nomination processes, campaign financing, leadership progression, safety, accountability and the broader enabling environment for women in politics.

The dialogue further underscored the importance of ensuring that efforts to strengthen political participation are inclusive and responsive to the experiences of women facing multiple and intersecting forms of exclusion, including women from minority communities, women with disabilities, young women, rural women, women affected by conflict, and women outside established political networks.

The event forms part of UN Women’s ongoing support to evidence-based policymaking, inclusive governance and women’s leadership in Sri Lanka. Findings from the report and recommendations emerging from the dialogue will contribute to future policy engagement, advocacy, programming and partnerships aimed at advancing women’s political participation and leadership, and ensuring that increased representation translates into meaningful influence and lasting change.

The Cabinet of Ministers has approved signing a Financial Grant Agreement between the Government and the European Union (EU) to secure pound 10 million funding to implement a four-year project, aimed at strengthening sustainable trade relations between Sri Lanka and the EU.

Addressing the weekly post-Cabinet media briefing, Cabinet Spokesman and Minister Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa said the EU had agreed to support the initiative, which seeks to promote green transition initiatives and climate-resilient trade practices.

The project will also focus on strengthening trade-related institutional capacities and supporting Sri Lanka’s efforts to comply with international standards required to access the EU market.

‘The Trade, Commerce, Food Security and Cooperative Development Ministry is expected to implement the project over a period of four years,’ he added.

The proposal to this effect was submitted by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, in his capacity as the Finance, Planning and Economic Development Minister.

The New Asia Forum (NAF) 2026 aims to mobilise $ 30 billion in investment across the New Asia region by strengthening strategic partnerships and accelerating investment execution.

Held under the patronage of President Prabowo Subianto, with Danantara Indonesia as a founding partner, the forum will take place on 3-4 December 2026 in Bali, Indonesia.

NAF 2026 is designed as an action-oriented platform connecting global investors, industry leaders, and policymakers to advance investment opportunities across strategic sectors. Moving beyond conventional economic dialogue, the forum seeks to translate investment interest into concrete commitments, financing structures, and measurable outcomes.

Danantara Indonesia, Global Relations and Communications Managing Director Pahala Nugraha Mansury emphasised Asia’s growing potential to attract long-term global capital amid shifting economic and geopolitical dynamics.

‘Our focus is on encouraging long-term capital to recognise the many investment opportunities across Asian countries, because this is precisely where the centre of gravity for growth lies. This will enable growth at scale, anchored by ASEAN and driven by Indonesia as the largest country in ASEAN,’ said Pahala.

The Asia-Pacific region currently accounts for nearly 60% of global economic growth. However, long-term international capital allocation to the region remains below its potential, presenting significant opportunities for greater investment collaboration.

NAF 2026 expects to convene more than 1,000 global leaders, feature over 100 speakers, and host more than 40 sessions involving sovereign wealth funds, institutional investors, development finance institutions, multinational corporations, and government representatives. Notable speakers include President Prabowo Subianto of Indonesia; Masayoshi Son, Chairman and CEO of SoftBank Group; Tshering Tobgay, Prime Minister of Bhutan; Kathleen Quirk, Chief Executive Officer of Freeport-McMoRan; Matteo Renzi, former Prime Minister of Italy; and Israfil Mammadov, Chief Executive Officer of the State Oil Fund of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

The forum will follow a two-day structure: Discovery and Diligence on 3 December, focusing on investment opportunities, feasibility, and transaction structures; and Action and Execution on 4 December, advancing capital commitments, strategic partnerships, and implementation milestones.

Eight priority sectors will anchor the discussions: strategic resources and downstreaming; energy and power; advanced mobility and manufacturing; digital infrastructure and AI; food and agribusiness; trade and connectivity; tourism and creative economy; and education and human capital.

As a founding partner, Danantara Indonesia will participate as a co-investor alongside global partners, supporting investment in strategic sectors and reinforcing Indonesia’s role in regional economic transformation.

Through its transaction-focused approach, NAF 2026 aims to deliver preliminary investment agreements, bankable financing structures, and clearly defined implementation milestones. Investment commitments and progress will be tracked across subsequent editions to promote accountability, continuity, and tangible economic impact for Indonesia and the wider region.

Fintrex Finance PLC has relaunched its ‘Dream Plan’, a recurring deposit product designed to help Sri Lankans turn their financial aspirations into achievable goals through disciplined monthly savings.

Inspired by the familiar ‘seettu’ savings practice, Dream Plan brings the principle of regular contributions into a structured investment arrangement, enabling customers to work towards a defined maturity target while earning interest under agreed product terms.

With investment targets ranging from Rs. 100,000 to Rs. 10,000,000 and investment periods of one to five years, Dream Plan can support goals such as children’s education, purchasing a vehicle, preparing for a future home or building personal financial security. The product offers a promotional nominal annual interest rate of 12.75% for eligible investments opened on or before 31 December 2026, subject to applicable terms and conditions.

Through this relaunch, Fintrex Finance aims to encourage purposeful saving and make structured financial planning more accessible to customers at different stages of life.

Customers can contact Fintrex Finance to explore available plans and obtain a personalised investment illustration.

At Huawei Decoding China 2026, Fang Xiang, Corporate Vice President and President of Wireless Network Solution of Huawei, unveiled a series of innovation breakthroughs to pioneer new communications networks. The innovation breakthroughs mark major leaps in root technologies focused on ubiquitous experience, simplified and green networks, and superior spectral efficiency. With the breakthroughs, Huawei has launched the world’s first commercial U6 GHz device VitaAAU, GigaGreen Plus series, and UBBPi series. Additionally featuring the new progress in open ecosystem for telecom agents, the breakthroughs will lay a solid foundation for new communications networks.

Huawei Corporate Vice President and President of Wireless Network Solution Xiang Fang unveiling innovation breakthroughs for new communications networks said: With booming intelligent devices and services, new devices, traffic, and applications are taking shape in the mobile industry. The new devices are expanding network connectivity from people to things and agents, increasing the number of connections by 100 times. Device-cloud synergy for intelligent services calls for stronger uplink capabilities to support training and inference, shifting network focus from downlink dominance to both uplink and downlink. With new applications, come a diversity of new interaction modes, calling for higher standards in experience and driving networks to support ubiquitous steady ultra-low latency with a high reliability.

As the world steps into an intelligent era, the value of connectivity is not only about quantity-it’s more about quality. This has been inspiring Huawei to convert cutting-edge breakthroughs into the commercial practices of new communications networks by focusing on root technologies for ubiquitous experience, simplified and green networks, and superior spectral efficiency.

RetinaMIMO is a new pioneering technology designed to solve the challenge of concurrent ultra-high bandwidth and ubiquitous coverage. It features the industry’s first Retina scanning system that allows RF link topologies to be reconstructed to eliminate coverage collapse in the vertical direction. It also adopts a reconstructed antenna array architecture to address the diminishing marginal gains as array elements (AEs) increase.

Based on RetinaMIMO, Huawei has launched the world’s first commercial U6 GHz device VitaAAU. Compared with similar products with 1024 AEs, VitaAAU widens coverage by about 30%, enabling U6 GHz to match C-band in both horizontal and vertical directions. This enables operators to deliver U6 GHz coverage for new communications networks on their C-band sites, minimising overall TCO. To date, VitaAAU has seen commercial adoption in the UAE and other markets, with peak downlink speeds exceeding 10 Gbps, making ubiquitous premium experience a reality.

Huawei’s pioneering EP power amplifier (PA) architecture capitalises on new materials and technologies to solve the problem of energy efficiency decline on higher frequency bands, maximizing energy conversion efficiency. The industry’s first-ever multimode dielectric filters allow antennas to have small dimensions and low power consumption on multi-channel networks with high frequency bands. Powered by new materials, technologies, and architectures, VitaAAU antenna is reduced to 1.5 m in diameter while supporting ‘0 Bit 0 Watt 0 Loss’, delivering superior energy saving efficiency. These innovations enable Huawei’s GigaGreen Plus series products to achieve significant reductions in dimensions, weight, and power consumption, better positioned to power simplified and green networks.

Multi-band, multi-cell, and multi-user interference is a major restrictive factor of capacity. The time scaling of the Tau (t) law is introduced to base stations for the first time to realise optimal dynamic resource scheduling across all domains based on the OSCAR solution. With low-latency bus and high-speed interconnect technology, a high-speed architecture is built to enable the real-time exchange of massive data. Thanks to software and hardware synergy, new UBBPi series products improve average user experience by 1.3 times while reducing power consumption by approximately 40%, further improving spectral and energy efficiency.

Autonomous networks have emerged as an inevitable choice to deal with the growing AI services and increasing network complexity. RANSpirit is another industry first from Huawei, implementing single-domain network autonomy based on the telecom foundation model and digital twins. To date, RANSpirit is serving more than 1.2 million cells across 25 networks around the world, providing assistance to more than 2,000 engineers.

Extensive agent collaboration relies on an open, win-win ecosystem. This galvanises Huawei to join industry partners to develop ecosystem standards, communities, and industry alliances. In terms of standards, Huawei adapts to the TM Forum, building a cross-agent foundation on the A2A-T standard and framework agreed upon by the industry. In terms of communities, Huawei jointly promotes neutral open-source communities and donates open-source agent components to the Linux Foundation, driving global collaboration and innovation. With regard to industry alliances, Huawei has taken the initiative to pool ecosystem strengths to accelerate business implementation based on the GSMA industry platform.

Fang concluded with the reiteration of Huawei’s unswerving pursuit of dual-drive innovation to promote new breakthroughs in mobile networks and work with partners from around the world to deepen the OpenAN ecosystem, advancing new communications networks through technological innovation and open collaboration.

The Government yesterday defended its decision to provide over Rs. 104 million in sponsorship for the 63rd Asian Broadcasting Union (ABU) General Assembly in Colombo, citing its potential to generate international publicity and strengthen Sri Lanka’s positioning as a tourism and MICE destination.

Cabinet Spokesman and Minister Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa clarified that the sponsorship was channelled through the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau (SLTPB), as part of its mandate to promote the country internationally, and did not constitute a direct allocation from the Treasury.

Responding to questions at the weekly post-Cabinet media briefing, he said the Bureau financed the sponsorship through funds generated from tourism-related levies, stressing that supporting international events with potential tourism promotional benefits fell within its remit.

He explained that the SLTPB regularly evaluates opportunities to support events and programs capable of strengthening the tourism industry, with sponsorship proposals assessed by its board, which includes representatives from the tourism and hospitality sectors.

On 2 November, in a media release issued by Sri Lanka Tourism noted that the ABU General Assembly was expected to generate promotional media value exceeding Rs. 250 million through international exposure.

The Bureau described the gathering as an opportunity to position Sri Lanka not only as a leisure destination, but also as a venue for international conferences and major events, an increasingly important segment of the country’s tourism development strategy.

The Spokesperson, who is also the Mass Media Minister clarified that the selection of MTV Channel Ltd., as the host broadcaster was made by the ABU and not by the Government.

The Colombo gathering brought together around 350 international delegates representing leading media organisations, providing Sri Lanka with an opportunity to showcase its tourism attractions and enhance its international visibility.

According to Dr. Jayatissa, the ABU has around 225 member organisations across 66 countries, making the assembly a significant international platform for exposure.

In addition, queries were also raised over the approval process, including whether the sponsorship proposal had initially been declined by the SLTPB and the rationale for seeking Cabinet approval.

Dr. Jayatissa said Cabinet approval was required given the value of the sponsorship, while reiterating that the SLTPB had the authority to assess and support tourism promotion opportunities.

The 63rd ABU General Assembly was held in Colombo from 30 October to 3 November 2026.

The Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) has increased its stake in ACL Cables PLC to over 10%.

ACL in a disclosure Monday said EPF shareholding in the company increased to 71.9 million shares, representing 10% of the issued share capital, as at 30 September 2026, through a series of transactions.

As at June 2026, the EPF held 68.9 million shares, equivalent to 9.6% stake. It remains the third largest shareholder overall whilst being the biggest institutional shareholder.

ACL Cables share price gained by 30 cents on Monday to close at Rs. 89.

CFA Society Sri Lanka, in collaboration with Deloitte, will host a professional development program titled ‘Demystifying Key Concepts to Successful Mergers and Acquisitions’ on Thursday, 5 November 2026, from 8.30 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. at Courtyard by Marriott, Colombo City Centre.

The program aims to provide participants with practical insights into the mergers and acquisitions (M and A) process, highlighting the critical factors that contribute to successful transactions. With increasing emphasis on corporate consolidation, strategic restructuring and business growth, the program will focus on effective deal structuring, comprehensive due diligence, risk management and value creation.

Participants will gain a better understanding of the key stages of an M and A transaction, with particular attention to tax, legal and financial due diligence, common transaction challenges and the importance of informed decision-making in achieving successful outcomes.

The program will be facilitated by an experienced panel of industry professionals, including Deloitte Sri Lanka and Maldives Partner and Head of Tax Charmaine Tillekeratne, Deloitte Sri Lanka Strategy, Risk

and Transactions Associate Director Buddhi Pathiraja, Sudath Perera Associates Partner and Head of Corporate and Commercial Law Dushyantha Perera, and NDB Capital Holdings Ltd.,CEO Senaka Kakiriwaragodage, CFA.

The event will kick off with a fireside chat hosted by Deloitte Sri Lanka and Maldives Strategy, Risk and Transactions Head Ruvini Fernando, joined by Deloitte Sri Lanka and Maldives Strategy, Risk and Transaction Services Valuation and Modelling Leader Lasanga Abeysuriya, and graced by the panellists.

Designed for corporate executives, finance and investment professionals, business leaders, legal and tax practitioners, and others involved in corporate transactions, the program offers an opportunity to strengthen practical knowledge and gain insights from experienced industry practitioners. For registration and further information, please visit www.cfasocietysrilanka.org

Demanding the repeal of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), the proposed Protection of the State from Terrorism Act (PSTA) and the Online Safety Act (OSA), which it says threaten the democratic rights of ordinary citizens, the Jana Aragala Vyaparaya(JAV-People’s Struggle Movement),will stage a protest near Parliament today (4).

The demonstration, scheduled to begin at 12 noon at the Parliament Roundabout, is expected to bring together trade unions, political activists and others opposed to the legislation.

Addressing a press conference in Nugegoda yesterday, JAV’s National Executive Committee member Vasantha Mudalige said the Government had temporarily shelved plans to introduce the PSTA following strong protests by the public.

He said the Government had initially intended to table and pass the proposed legislation in Parliament on November 4 and 5, but public resistance had forced it to reconsider.

‘We believe it is a positive step that the Government has, to some extent, done by responding to people’s voices against those laws. However, we urge the Government to repeal the PTA, just as it should withdraw the PSTA. The Online Safety Act must also be repealed,’ he said.

Mudalige warned that the proposed laws could be used to suppress dissent and silence citizens opposing Government policies.

‘If this legislation is enacted, the people will only be able to open their mouths to eat or to yawn,’ he said.

He accused the National People’s Power (NPP) Government of abandoning the democratic principles it advocated during the 2022 public uprising, which challenged political corruption and economic mismanagement.

Mudalige said the Government’s economic policies, centred on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) program, had imposed a heavy burden on ordinary citizens through taxation and rising living costs.

He cited difficulties faced by young people in meeting transport costs, shortages of medicines in hospitals and the inability of families to afford educational materials for their children.

He also criticised the Government over alleged police violence and warned that expanding police powers under the proposed legislation could further undermine civil liberties.

Recalling the repression faced by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) under the PTA, Mudalige said it was a tragedy that a political movement which had experienced such repression was now preparing to introduce laws that could restrict the democratic rights of citizens.

‘We demand that the Government immediately withdraw these anti-people, repressive laws – the PTA, PSTA and OSA,’ he said.

Mudalige invited the public to join tomorrow’s protest, warning that the movement would continue its campaign until the legislation was repealed.