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The Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) is to conduct a planned full day of trading from the Disaster Recovery site using the Automated Trading System Disaster Recovery Solution tomorrow (10).

Taj Samudra, Colombo was honoured to host the national women’s cricket teams of Australia, Bangladesh, and South Africa during their recent visit to Sri Lanka. In a heartfelt display of Sri Lankan hospitality, the teams were welcomed with traditional drummers and garlanding ceremonies, symbolising the warmth and cultural richness of the island nation. A warm welcome ceremony led by the Area Director – Taj Maldives and Sri Lanka, and General Manager Samrat Datta, alongside our team members at Taj Samudra, Colombo.

BYD together with its authorised distributor in Sri Lanka, John Keells CG Auto, marked a dual milestone with the opening of its sixth showroom in Moratuwa and the launch of the BYD SEALION 5 Plug-in Hybrid SUV.

The new BYD showroom in Moratuwa marks the brand’s third fully owned facility in Sri Lanka, joining Colombo and Kurunegala. This expansion enhances access to BYD’s growing portfolio of New Energy Vehicles (NEVs) for customers in Colombo’s southern suburbs. Supported by fully equipped service centres in Colombo and Wattala, BYD and JKCG Auto are steadily building a strong support ecosystem, ensuring customers receive reliable after-sales care and can confidently embrace advanced new energy mobility.

The BYD SEALION 5 joins BYD’s Sri Lankan line-up as a compact plug-in hybrid SUV built on the brand’s Super DM-i technology platform. Equipped with a high-efficiency 1.5L Xiaoyun engine paired with BYD’s Blade Battery, the BYD SEALION 5 offers a combined driving range of up to 1,030 km (NEDC). Beyond efficiency, the model has been developed with practicality and comfort in mind, featuring a spacious interior, advanced driver assistance systems, and design elements inspired by BYD’s ‘Ocean Aesthetics’ concept. Together, these features make the BYD SEALION 5 well-suited for both daily urban commutes and long-distance travel across Sri Lanka.

‘We are pleased to announce two milestone additions to BYD’s growing presence with the opening of our new BYD showroom in Moratuwa to better serve customers in the Colombo Southern suburbs.’

‘As part of our ongoing expansion strategy, we are also excited to introduce the BYD SEALION 5, an advanced hybrid SUV powered by BYD’s Super DM-i technology. This model represents our continued commitment to offering sustainable mobility solutions in Sri Lanka, ensuring that customers have access to the highest quality NEVs that combine performance, energy efficiency, and range for everyday driving,’ said John Keells CG Auto, CEO Charith Panditharatne.

The Asia Pacific Motorsport Championship (APMC) 2025 concluded at the SpeedBay Circuit, Bandaragama, Sri Lanka, from 26 to 28 September, drawing 210 competitors from 17 nations across the region.

After a thrilling weekend of competition across karting, autocross, eSports, and gymkhana disciplines, the Philippines emerged as the overall champions, while Sri Lanka secured second place and Hong Kong, China, finished third.

The event marked several historic firsts: the unveiling of the FIA Cross Car, locally designed, engineered, and built under the FIA’s Affordable Cross Car initiative; the first-ever Cross Car event in the region; the debut of 4-stroke Karting Endurance; and an Auto Gymkhana run using locally assembled Hyundai Grand i10s.

Meanwhile, a returning discipline included Karting Sprint, which saw the region’s best talent across the Cadet, Junior, and Senior categories take to the tracks. Karting Slalom, meanwhile, managed to pull in over 40 regional competitors who battled it out over a tight and twisting slalom course which testing driver’s memory, precision, and speed.

Winners in the eSports category received Next Level Racing F-GT Lite rigs, highlighting the growing importance of virtual racing in developing grassroots motorsport. The event was organised by the Ceylon Motor Sports Club (CMSC), a member of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA).

Medal Tally (Top Three)

Philippines – 2 Gold, 2 Silver, 2 Bronze (6 total)

Sri Lanka – 2 Gold, 2 Silver, 1 Bronze (5 total)

Hong Kong, China – 2 Gold, 1 Silver, 2 Bronze (5 total)

Highlights of podium results

Cross Car Autocross: Gold – Ashan Silva (Sri Lanka), Silver – Ricardo Enrique Montelibano (Philippines), Bronze – Mohd Shafic Bin Samsudin (Malaysia)

Auto Gymkhana (Male): Gold – Ashish Bharati (India), Silver – Kum Yao Tseng (Chinese Taipei), Bronze – Richard Gallardo (Philippines)

Auto Gymkhana (Female): Gold – Corrine East Johnston (Australia), Silver – Tarushi Vikram (India), Bronze – Dina Mukhametzianova (Kazakhstan)

Karting Endurance (Team): Gold – Kyrgyzstan, Silver – Pakistan, Bronze – Uzbekistan

Karting Slalom (Junior): Gold – Evan Samarajiwa (Sri Lanka), Silver – Sophia Zara Binti Mustaffa Kamal (Malaysia), Bronze – Shenuka Nithin Wijayaesekara (Sri Lanka)

Karting Slalom (Senior): Gold – Carlos Inigo Anton (Philippines), Silver – Yu Kuan (Chinese Taipei), Bronze – Chen Xuan Wu (Chinese Taipei)

Karting Sprint (Cadet): Gold – Mason Alexander (Hong Kong, China), Silver – Carson Choy (Hong Kong, China), Bronze – Sum Mei Alice Lo (Hong Kong, China)

Karting Sprint (Junior): Gold – Axel Nocom (Philippines), Silver – Tehan Amarasiri (Sri Lanka), Bronze – Hyungi Min (South Korea)

Karting Sprint (Senior): Gold – Yu Ka Po (Hong Kong, China), Silver – Aaran Dean (India), Bronze – Zarif Wakra (Malaysia)

eSports iRacing: Gold – Sota Muto (Japan), Silver – Nabil Azalan (Malaysia), Bronze – Russel Reyes (Philippines)

eSports Assetto Corsa: Gold – Naquid Azian (Malaysia), Silver – Luis Moreno (Philippines), Bronze – Yim Ching Kit (Hong Kong, China)

FIA Secretary General for Sport, Valerio Iachizzi, said: ‘It has been a huge challenge, with fierce competition and rivalry, but more than this, what I want to highlight is the fact that you have created memories and friendships, and this is something you will carry with you for your entire life. It’s important for me to acknowledge the tremendous work of the Ceylon Motor Sports Club (CMSC) and thank the entire organisation. On behalf of the President of the FIA, I warmly thank the working groups and everyone who dedicated so much time and effort to make this event happen. It’s a real honour for me to be here representing the entire federation, the staff, and everyone involved. I’m here to say congratulations to all of you.’

The championship was powered by an esteemed roster of partners: Hyundai Abans Auto – Official Automobile Partner, Westlake Tires – Gymkhana Tire Partner, Eastwind Logistics – Logistics Partner, Next Level Racing – eSports Title Sponsor, Chama Computers – Technology Partner, Akbar Tea – Official Tea Partner, and Meguiar’s – Coverage Partner.

Cosmetics.lk, has been honoured with the title ‘Most Popular Website in Sri Lanka’ in the E-Commerce Category at BestWeb.lk 2025, organised by the LK Domain Registry.

BestWeb.lk is Sri Lanka’s premier web competition, recognising and rewarding excellence in web presence, creativity, technical quality, user experience, and innovation.

Among hundreds of entries across multiple industries, Cosmetics.lk stood out for its strong digital presence and the overwhelming support it received from its growing community of customers nationwide.

Cosmetics.lk Founder Lasantha Gunawardena said: ‘We are truly honoured to receive this recognition. This award reflects the trust and loyalty of our valued customers who continue to choose Cosmetics.lk as their go-to platform for authentic, high-quality beauty, wellness, and personal care products. It also motivates us to keep innovating and delivering the best shopping experience in Sri Lanka.’

Cosmetics.lk has built its reputation by offering a wide portfolio of premium international and dermatologist-trusted brands to the Sri Lankan market.

Among the many names available on the platform are CeraVe, The Ordinary, Cetaphil, Neutrogena, Loreal, Palmers, Aveeno, La Roche-Posay, and popular Korean skincare brands such as Anua, SKIN1004 Centella, Medicube, COSRX, and K-Secret SEOUL. In addition to skincare and cosmetics, Cosmetics.lk also offers a carefully curated range of supplements and wellness products from globally trusted brands, including Centrum, NOW, Vital Proteins, Perfectil, Neocell, and Relumins. All products are directly imported from Canada, the USA, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, New Zealand, and other leading European nations, ensuring Sri Lankan consumers have access to authentic, high-quality beauty, wellness, and personal care essentials that meet international standards.

What truly sets Cosmetics.lk apart is its dedication to customer care and convenience. Shoppers

With plans to expand its retail footprint further in the coming years, the brand is set to strengthen its presence as a leading force in the beauty and personal care industry. From winning the Gold Award for Best E-Commerce Website at BestWeb.lk 2022 to being crowned the Most Popular Website in 2025, Cosmetics.lk has consistently proven its strength in Sri Lanka’s digital retail space. Each recognition marks not just an achievement, but a reflection of the brand’s ongoing journey to innovate, expand, and put customer satisfaction at the heart of everything it does.

Prime Minister and Education, Higher Education, and Vocational Education Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya told Parliament yesterday that the Government aims to make all teachers degree holders as part of ongoing education reforms.

Speaking during the parliamentary debate on education sector changes, she said teacher training colleges had seen little reform in decades and required both structural and curriculum upgrades. ‘This is not just a matter of funding – there has been insufficient focus on how these institutions function,’ she noted.

Dr. Amarasuriya said a new curriculum will be introduced this year to align teacher training with national education reform goals. ‘Our priority is to produce teachers who meet the real needs of the country. We are already training both current trainees and those involved in teacher education,’ she said.

She added that the government’s long-term goal is to elevate all teacher training colleges to degree-awarding institutions. ‘At present, only the Kuliyapitiya Teacher Training College grants degrees. We plan to raise the remaining 19 colleges to that same level,’ the Prime Minister said.

Cabinet Spokesman and Minister Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa yesterday said that the Cabinet of Ministers had approved a proposal to award a long-term contract to Singapore-based BB Energy Asia Ltd. for the supply of four shipments of Murban crude oil to Sri Lanka.

The decision follows a competitive bidding process conducted by the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) for registered suppliers under two payment options, immediate release from stocked tanks and payment within 30 days via a letter of credit issued by the Bank of Ceylon.

The contract covers deliveries over a four-month period from 1 January to 30 April 2026.

According to Cabinet Spokesman Dr. Jayatissa, the Cabinet approved the award based on recommendations from the Cabinet-Appointed Special Standing Procurement Committee, which evaluated six bids before selecting BB Energy Asia as the successful supplier.

The JVP-NPP’s Goebbelsian lie of a 76-year-old, post-Independence ‘curse’ and a Sri Lankan ‘renaissance’ under AKD, collapses in the domain of foreign policy and international relations.

Apologists for President Anura Dissanayake’s surreal foreign policy, a major deviation from the mainstream of Sri Lanka’s external relations tradition, view that policy through a pair of rose-tinted lenses: Both lenses are cracked. Firstly, Anura did not try to secure his new administration and the country any countervailing capacity (he avoided BRICS Plus) or wiggle-room for renegotiation. The ‘structural constraints’ are tighter because of his choice of complete conformity, continuity and compliance. Secondly, ‘hedging’ would be making the Tianjin SCO summit and the Tokyo trip, not avoiding the first while doing the second.

With episodes of erroneous exceptions, Sri Lanka’s foreign policy practice has been actively participatory and its discourse reformist, seeking to raise our profile and secure space while collectively striving to reform the international system so as to gain a better, fairer deal for countries like ours.

AKD has abandoned that ‘great tradition’. Connect the dots and you’ll see that his preferential option is to inhabit a triangular cage: India-Japan-Israel.

For the first time since 1948, foreign policy isn’t rooted in a calculus of the interests of the Sri Lankan State by its elected leadership, but is the product of the interface of initiatives by a few top corporates and interests of the ruling JVP-NPP. This new oligarchy determines our foreign relations. Internationalism of the intellect

Sri Lanka must understand the complex and fluid – ‘kaleidoscopic’ (Mervyn de Silva)- character of the changes taking place in the world system and order, so as to decide how this small but strategically located island must navigate so as to defend, manage and advance its national interests.

Our greatest foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar was well aware of this. In 2005, the last year of his life, he founded a journal of which he was the Editor-in-Chief, entitled International Relations in a Globalizing World (I was a member of the Editorial Board) precisely because he understood the need for a conceptual grasp of global affairs for the formulation of foreign policy.

Kadirgamar belonged to an elite with a tradition, namely the ‘internationalist’ generation of the post-Independence Ceylonese intelligentsia which among other things, established the prestigious, non-state, non-corporate Ceylon Institute of World Affairs (co-founded/re-founded in the 1960s by Maj-Gen Anton Muttucumaru and Mervyn de Silva).

What is most lacking in the current Sri Lankan discussion on world affairs is the analytical starting point of totality, i.e., beginning with a grasp of global or world-system dynamics and contemporary history. Instead, personal, partisan and parochial factors determine the interpretation of the global.

Hegemony vs. Multipolarity

Current history is characterised by the striving of the Western powers to maintain their hegemony in the world system and restore the unipolarity of the post-Cold War moment, at a time the world system and order are increasingly multipolar. The West strives to hold the East and South in check, while the US attempts to restore its dominance within the West and over the world order while dramatically reordering its own domestic social contract.

The West’s project is global counterreformation, even counterrevolution. It is a struggle between two tendencies i.e., US/Western hegemonism vs. global multipolarity, which point in two directions, i.e., return to West-centrism vs. evolution to multipolarity.

It is a contest between a conservative or reactionary project (however ideologically liberal many Western players may be) of the maintenance of the current extent of Western dominance or a rollback to post-Cold War unipolarity, and the revisionist/reformist project (however ideologically conservative the Eurasian players) of a multipolar and therefore more balanced, pluralist, democratic, world order.

Sri Lanka’s stance

Sri Lanka must have a clear sense of where its most fundamental interests lie, and base its way of being in the (dynamically evolving) world accordingly. While rooting ourselves firmly, we must also have our ‘heads on a swivel’, aware of everything that’s happening, spotting possible dangers, advantages and opportunities. Sri Lanka must have a firm ‘Grand strategic’ stance, while having flexible tactics.

What must that firm ‘Grand strategic’ stance be and derive from? It must be rooted in reality; the geopolitical and existential reality of who, what, where we are (as Mervyn de Silva insisted).

Sri Lanka is located in –belongs in -the Global South and therefore belongs to the Global South. Some of our politicians may have delusions to the contrary, but this is the ineluctable reality. Therefore, one of the axioms of our foreign policy must be to identify ourselves with the Global South and leverage the benefits of belonging to it.

Sri Lanka is located in Asia. Therefore, it must identify itself with Asia in particular and Eurasia in general.

A small island state, Sri Lanka should associate itself with the Global South and Eurasia, which contain the overwhelming majority of humanity as well as of the member states of the United Nations.

Covid-19 and Trump tariffs have shown us that supply chains can be blocked, external markets are elastic and therefore cannot determine our foreign policy.

Our foreign policy must reflect our identity and serve our long-term interests. We must stand with whom we share a broad identity, basic ideas and interests.

Though the foundational positioning of Sri Lanka must be within the Global South/Eurasia, we mustn’t perceive or project ourselves as ‘anti-West’ because we have something fundamental which we share with the West, and almost certainly more with the West than the East, while there is something fundamental we share with the East, and much more with the East than the West.

Ceylon/Sri Lanka is the oldest multiparty democracy in Afro-Asia. We fought two civil wars to protect and preserve that competitive, pluralist civilian democracy from the totalitarian left, and we won while never permitting dictatorship of the right or the military. In this, Ceylon/Sri Lanka has a better record than much of the Global South and parts of Europe.

No monolith, the West is also the home of dynamic progressive popular mobilisations in solidarity with just causes in the global South. While the diplomatic support for Palestine in the UN Security Council comes from the East, the mass protests against the genocide in Gaza come from the West and the South. The genocide case in the ICJ is from the South and North. A Palestinian state and peace with/for Iran will only come with a progressive Democrat in the White House. If Democratic Party candidate Zohran Mamdani, a committed ‘democratic socialist’, supporter of Palestine, child of parents from the global South, wins the New York mayoralty in November, it will shine a light for all progressives globally. Thus, Sri Lanka must never be anti-West. It must be internationalist.

Our fundamental interests and values intersect with both the West/North (pluralist democracy) and the East/South (independence, sovereignty). We need both sets of values. We cannot be aligned against the North/West or the South/East.

However weak the Nonaligned Movement today, the doctrine, the principles of Nonalignment remain the most suitable for Sri Lanka.

‘Committed to the hilt’

Sri Lanka must neither be ‘uncommitted’ nor ‘equidistant’. A year after the Bandung Conference (1955) and six years before the founding in Belgrade of the Nonaligned Movement (1961) with Ceylon’s Sirimavo Bandaranaike as a founding member, Prime Minister SWRD Bandaranaike addressed the 11th UN General Assembly and rejected the definition of ‘uncommitted nations’ to describe those who subscribed to the Bandung principles. In a memorable turn of phrase, he roared that ‘we are committed to the hilt.to justice and freedom.’.

SWRD Bandaranaike was hardly equidistant when he faced a dilemma while addressing the UNGA: the twin crises in Egypt and Hungary. In Egypt it was the joint Israel-UK-France invasion and seizure of the Suez Canal after President Gamal Abdel Nasser had nationalised it. In Hungary it was the intervention by Soviet troops to suppress an anti-Soviet uprising in Hungary (perceived as fomented by the CIA) and prevent Hungary’s probable exit from the Warsaw Pact.

Bandaranaike spoke at far greater length and placed far heavier emphasis on the Suez crisis than on Hungary. Affirming Nasser’s right to nationalise the Suez Canal, he condemned the Israeli-Anglo-French invasion and seizure of the Canal. Objecting to a gradual, incremental withdrawal, he demanded that ‘Those forces must now be withdrawn without delay…now!’

Referring to ‘the Hungarian episode’, he supported that part of the Resolution calling for the withdrawal of Soviet troops but opposed the call for ‘free elections under UN auspices’ as a violation of national sovereignty.

‘Are you surprised that we lay greater emphasis on Egypt than on Hungary?’ asks SWRD Bandaranaike in his UNGA speech. He explains: ‘we of Asia.have undergone two or three hundred years of colonialism’ and are more sensitive to anything that smacks of colonialism by ex-colonial powers.

To Bandaranaike’s rationale, I would add four reasons why we should privilege the North-South axis rather than the East-West axis, and should not tilt to the North against the South (as JR did catastrophically on the Falklands/Malvinas), or the West against the East.

i. As in Latin America and East Asia, political regimes such as right-wing dictatorships can be overthrown and democracy restored. But former Yugoslavia (where the NAM was founded) and several Arab and African countries prove that once a state is divided or disintegrated, it is almost never fully reunified, repaired, restored. On national independence, sovereignty, territorial unity and integrity, and opposition to secession, it is the global East and South that stand firm, while the West/North is sympathetic to or permits the activities of separatists (Canada and India’s Khalistanis, Sri Lanka’s Tigers).

ii. The vision of the Global South and Eurasia (BRICS, SCO etc.) of a multipolar world order, more equitable globalisation and multilateral diplomacy, is far more compatible with the interests of Sri Lanka than the US-led West’s hierarchical, hegemonistic vision of unipolarity (often coupled with unilateralism).

iii. It is far safer for a small state like Sri Lanka to prioritise its relationships with multilateral groupings containing the majority of the world’s populace and the world’s states, than to be dependent either upon the West/North which contains electorally consequential ethnic lobbies, or upon neighbours with ethnic kin-states/enclaves (e.g., Tamil Nadu) sympathetic towards secessionists, secessionism or annexation.

iv. The demographic weight of Eurasia and the Global South, taken together with the economic and military power of China and the nuclear power of Russia, bring balance into the world, shifting the needle towards ‘Global Equilibrium’ (Simon Bolivar, Jose Marti) which is in the interests of countries like Sri Lanka.

Pinnacle to puddle, eagle to poodle

Putting to shame those pundits who advocate a poodle-like foreign policy for Sri Lanka because of economics, it must be recalled that SWRD Bandaranaike, the first leader of this country to address the UNGA and the world through it, presented a passionate, self-confident vision not because Ceylon was big, rich or strong. ‘My country is a small one, a weak one, a poor one’ he admitted honestly, but that hardly prevented him from declaring that Ceylon and the ex-colonial countries represented at the Bandung Conference were ‘committed to the hilt!’. Indeed, Ceylon’s reality was propellent not preventive for him to articulate the assertive foreign policy doctrine that he did.

Bandaranaike self-confidently conceptualised the challenges facing Ceylon in all their complexity, and did so while locating them in world history as it was unfolding.

‘.At this epoch of newly gained freedom, we find ourselves faced with a dual problem. A problem within a problem. First, the problem of converting a colonial society, politically, socially and economically, into a free society-and the problem of effecting that conversion against a background of changing world conditions.

The world itself is in a state of change and flux today. The world is going through one of those rare occasions that happen in certain intervals of a changeover from one society to another, from one civilisation to another. We are living today in fact in a period of transition between two civilisations, the old and the new. At a period like this, all kinds of conflicts arise-ideological, national, economic, political; every kind of conflict. It has done so in the past. In the past they were settled by some nice little war here or there. Today we cannot afford the luxury of war, for we all know what it means. So, the task for us today is a far more difficult one than ever faced mankind-to effect this kind of transition to some form of stable human society and to do it amid a welter of conflict, with reasonable peace; with the avoidance of conflict that bursts out into war, for war is unthinkable today.

.We in Asia.we like to get something, some ideas, some principle from this side, some ideas from the other, until and unless a coherent form of society is built up that suits our own people, in the context of the changing world of today. That is why we do not range ourselves on the side of this power-bloc or that power-bloc.It is not sitting on the fence. It is a position that is inexorably cast upon us by the circumstances of the day.’

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ipy8NSGxhTQ)

Winding up his speech, SWRD Bandaranaike went on the offensive:

‘.We are supposed to be uncommitted? I strongly object to that word, ‘uncommitted’! We are committed up to the hilt, believe me! We are committed to preserve decency of dealings between nations. We are committed to the cause of justice and freedom, as much as anyone…’

Unlike SWRD, AKD expressed no ‘commitment’ in his UNGA speech to any principle, concept, value, idea-still less one of a universal, transformational character. SWRD enunciated a foreign policy doctrine for Asian and ex-colonial countries in a new, complex global and historical situation. AKD preferred instead, a superficial and shallow presentation of Sri Lanka’s situation. He presented no perspective on current global changes as SWRD did, probably because he had none to offer.

The almost antinomian SWRD/AKD contrast isn’t sourced in Bandaranaike’s linguistic-oratorical advantage, because AKD addressed the UNGA in Sinhala. It is sourced in an asymmetry of intellect, a contradiction of consciousness.

One of the ‘Children of ’56’ (Mervyn de Silva’s coinage, South Asian Review 1972) and leader of a self-professedly Marxist left party, President Anura Dissanayake’s UNGA speech was thin, hollow, vapid, instantly forgettable; incomparable and incompatible with the indelibly memorable, principled, courageous, visionary speech by SWRD Bandaranaike from the same rostrum.

JVP-NPP ideologues would sneer and splutter ‘that was a different era’, but AKD’s discourse also bore no resemblance whatsoever to that of Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, Chile’s Gabriel Boric and Brazil’s Lula at the UNGA this year.

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Government of Sri Lanka have signed a loan agreement for the Kerawalapitiya-Port L Second Transmission Line Project, under which AIIB will provide $ 52 million in sovereign-backed financing to help Sri Lanka unlock its renewable energy potential and advance sustainable development.

The project involves the design, supply, constructing, testing, and commissioning of a 220kV single-circuit underground cable system linking the Kerawalapitiya Switching Station to the Colombo Port L Grid Substation.

As the second underground cable on this route, it will complement the first line commissioned in 2019, which will soon be insufficient to meet the projected electricity demand in the Greater Colombo area.

The new transmission line is critical for ensuring uninterrupted power supply, maintaining grid stability, and enabling the evacuation of renewable energy from the northern and eastern regions towards major load centres in Colombo.

Once operational, the project is expected to benefit local communities, urban services, and businesses in the Greater Colombo development area by providing a stable and reliable electricity supply.

It will also directly support the growing power needs of the upcoming special economic zone, while indirectly reducing the risk of major blackouts, delivering considerable economic and social benefits.

This project stands as a strong testament to the deepening partnership between AIIB and Sri Lanka, a founding member of the bank.

So far, AIIB has supported five transformative projects in the country, with a total financing of $ 534 million across the energy, transport, and urban sectors, driving sustainable growth and development.

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is a multilateral development bank dedicated to financing ‘Infrastructure for Tomorrow,’ with sustainability at its core. AIIB began operations in 2016, now has 110 approved members worldwide, is capitalised at $ 100 billion and is AAA-rated by major international credit rating agencies. AIIB collaborates with partners to mobilise capital and invest in infrastructure and other productive sectors that foster sustainable economic development and enhance regional connectivity.

The Colombo stock market yesterday dipped largely due to profit taking amidst healthy turnover.

The benchmark ASPI declined by 0.3% and the active S and P SL20 by 0.4%. Turnover was Rs. 7.3 billion.

Foreign investors remained net sellers, recording a net outflow of Rs. 196.2 million.

First Capital said post hitting the 22,000 milestone on ASPI, marked the first day of profit taking, after 15 consecutive days of gains.

While both retail and HNW participation was high, investors have largely realized gains on the Banking sector counters and conglomerates.

BUKI, SUN, DIAL, COMB and CARS were the top contributors to the index.

Banking sector took the lead in terms of sector wise contributions to turnover, with a share of 21%, followed by the Capital Goods sector and Food retailing sector, which produced a combined contribution of 35%. Food retailing sector’s high turnover was underpinned by the increased HNW participation observed in CARG and CTHR.

NDB Securities said high net worth and institutional investor participation was noted in Cargills, C T Holdings and Commercial Bank. Mixed interest was observed in Lanka Credit and Business Finance, John Keells Holdings and Colombo Dockyard whilst retail interest was noted in Kotagala Plantations, Co-Operative Insurance Company and Hela Apparel Holdings.

The Banking sector was the top contributor to the market turnover (due to Commercial Bank) whilst the sector index lost 0.35%. The share price of Commercial Bank increased by 75 cents to Rs. 197.

The Capital Goods sector was the second highest contributor to the market turnover (due to Colombo Dockyard and John Keells Holdings) whilst the sector index decreased by 0.74%. The share price of Colombo Dockyard recorded a gain of Rs. 4.50 to Rs. 134.

The share price of John Keells Holdings declined by 20 cents to Rs. 21.50.

Cargills and C T Holdings were also included amongst the top turnover contributors. The share price of Cargills closed flat at Rs. 750. The share price of C T Holdings moved down by Rs. 1.50 to Rs. 651.