Canadian Agricultural Mission in town to strengthen ties

The High Commission of Canada in Sri Lanka and the Maldives, in collaboration with The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, has announced the visit of a Canadian Agricultural Mission to Sri Lanka from 27-31 October.

The five-day mission aims to deepen bilateral cooperation in agriculture, agri-food, and agri-tech. Focusing on agricultural policy, productivity, smart agriculture, and climate resilience, the mission will bring together industry representatives, policymakers, academics, and Government officials. Activities will take place across Colombo, Kandy, and Jaffna, featuring a series of workshops and conferences to encourage collaboration and practical outcomes.

This initiative will provide a platform for stakeholder dialogue on the challenges and opportunities within both countries’ agricultural sectors. It will explore Sri Lanka’s production and supply chain gaps while sharing Canada’s best practices in technology adoption, efficiency, and sustainability. The mission will also focus on developing skills, sharing knowledge, and fostering academia-industry partnerships.

Discussions are expected to identify gaps in agricultural production, technology, and supply chains and explore how Sri Lanka and Canada can collaborate to address them. Expanding market access for Canadian agri-food and agri-tech products will also be discussed.

Panels will explore how Sri Lanka’s agriculture can evolve from subsistence farming to a model that enhances productivity, resilience, value addition, and export competitiveness while safeguarding food security and farmer livelihoods.

The mission aims to build lasting connections and practical collaborations that benefit farmers, communities, and the wider agricultural sector in both Sri Lanka and Canada.

Dankotuwa Porcelain nearly triples public holding to 35%

Dankotuwa Porcelain PLC has increased its public shareholding to 34.98% as of 30 September 2025, up from 12.57% three months earlier.

The float-adjusted market capitalisation rose to Rs. 1.08 billion from Rs. 439.37 million over the same period, while the number of voting public shareholders increased to 6,532 from 4,588.

The company reported a net asset value per share of Rs. 16.80 as of end-June 2025. Ceyline Investments Ltd., was the largest shareholder at 64.89%, followed by Ambeon Holdings PLC with 22.41% at the same date.

’Agentic AI’ is the next revolution declares global giant Salesforce Chief

Salesforce Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff recently declared that ‘Agentic AI’ is the next revolution, where humans and Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents drive customer success together in ‘Agentic Enterprises.’

This declaration was made at the world’s leading AI Customer Relations Management (CRM) solutions provider’s ‘Dreamforce 2025’ three-day event in San Francisco.

The event, which has 1,500 sessions addressed by over 100 IT leaders, drove home the point that when AI is built with trust, it will elevate people, as agents handle the busy work so that employees can focus on work that matters in an enterprise.

Benioff also spoke of what he described as the ‘agentic divide,’ in which consumers are elevated but not enterprises.

To address this divide, Salesforce showcased its latest innovation ‘Agentforce 360,’ the world’s first platform designed to connect humans and AI agents in one trusted system – empowering every employee to achieve more, every customer-facing moment to deliver more, and every company to operate with unprecedented intelligence and speed. It was described as the most complete platform for building, controlling, and deploying trusted enterprise AI agents at scale.

‘To get AI right, you have got to get your data right,’ Benioff said during the keynote at Dreamforce, attended by over 50,000 including global customers, partners, and media, including the Daily FT.

‘You have got to get to more integrated solutions. You have got to get the priorities right. You have to get the governance right,’ he said, part in reference to a recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) study that showed that generative AI pilot projects tend to fail.

‘The speed of adoption of technology by enterprise customers is not outpacing the speed of innovation,’ he emphasised separately during a media interaction. ‘Our job is to get those customers into adoption mode. The way to do it is by showing them customers who are front-left runners in this. When you look at these customers, they are making it happen, and I think that their stories are so critical and compelling,’ the Salesforce Chief emphasised.

Dreamforce 2025 showcased what it means to become an Agentic Enterprise featuring real customer demos from OpenAI, Williams-Sonoma, Inc., Pandora, Accenture, PepsiCo, FedEx, and Dell Technologies.

Benioff stressed that Salesforce was built on trust, customer success, innovation, equality, and sustainability. He revealed how two decades of connecting customers, data, and trust have led to the next leap in business – the rise of the Agentic Enterprise, where AI doesn’t replace people, but elevates them.

The Agentic Enterprise represents a new model for work – where AI elevates people rather than replacing them. In an Agentic Enterprise, every team operates with 24/7 intelligence: sales leads are never missed, service never sleeps, and every employee has an AI partner that helps them move faster and make smarter decisions. The result is a new era of productivity, customer connection, and growth.

Salesforce’s proven automation and analytics now power AI agents capable of turning every workflow into intelligence, every employee into a multiplier, and every customer interaction into a moment of impact.

Agentforce 360 is designed to deliver controlled, contextual, and consistent experiences across every customer and employee interaction-it gives teams the fastest path from AI prototypes to production-scale agents.

Built on learnings from more than 12,000 Agentforce implementations, the Agentforce 360 platform delivers a new Agent Script language for defining behaviour, an integrated voice-native experience layer, a reimagined Agentforce Builder for rapid, conversational development and testing, and easy, AI-powered unstructured data pipelines that turn even the most complex documents into reliable context for reasoning. The result: accurate, brand-aligned, production-ready agents built for enterprise-grade deployments.

Agent Script, a new scripting language for controlling agents, is a core component of the Agentforce 360 platform release. Agent Script combines the creativity of AI with the rigour of business workflows so that agents perform the exact way a company wants them to, every time. Agent Script allows enterprises to define agent behaviour with a human-readable expression language, which enables conditional logic, precise tool use, and guided, deterministic controls. This new level of control empowers Agentforce to tackle even the most complex tasks with confidence.

It was revealed that Agentforce 360 delivers the most advanced capabilities yet for building, deploying, and governing enterprise-grade AI agents. These innovations span the entire Salesforce ecosystem, from platform to data to customer apps to Slack, which is the Agentic OS for the Enterprise.

Agentforce 360 also uniquely brings together the four ingredients of an Agentic Enterprise.

Agentforce 360 Platform: The foundation for enterprise-grade AI agents, now featuring a new conversational builder, hybrid reasoning for greater control and accuracy, and voice capabilities.

Data 360: The trusted, unified data layer that gives every agent context. With innovations like Intelligent Context and Tableau Semantics, companies can turn unstructured data and analytics into rich context and understanding for AI.

Customer 360 Apps: The business logic and institutional memory of every enterprise – capturing how it sells, serves, markets, and operates – now brought to life through AI agents that deeply understand every customer and process from the inside out.

Slack: The conversational interface for humans and agents to work together, connecting knowledge, actions, and data in real time.

This uniquely integrated approach enables businesses to deploy agents that are grounded in governed, trusted data; work across teams and workflows; collaborate with humans and other agents directly in Slack; and leverage existing processes, business logic, and data infrastructure. And with its open ecosystem, partners extend Salesforce’s technology into every industry with tailored solutions and services.

Agentforce 360 also introduces the most dependable and accessible agents yet – designed to reason, act, and collaborate alongside people.

Agentforce Builder: A new conversational development studio that lets teams design, test, and deploy agents using natural language – no manual configuration required.

Agentforce Voice: A native voice layer that transforms Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems into natural, real-time conversations with low-latency transcription, realistic speech synthesis, and deep Salesforce integration. Voice is compatible with leading enterprise Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) partners such as Amazon Connect, Five9, NiCE, and Vonage.

Hybrid Reasoning and Agent Script: Combines deterministic workflows with flexible Large-Language Model (LLM) reasoning for precision and adaptability. Developers can define guardrails, tool use, and logic using Agent Script, powered by the configurable Atlas Reasoning Engine.

Agentforce Vibes: Extends low-code development to AI, letting builders ‘vibe-code’ apps grounded in company data and governance.

Observability: New dashboards help teams monitor reasoning, accuracy, and compliance – improving reliability over time.

Not just a pilot but most successful solution ever

According to Salesforce, Agentforce 360 isn’t another AI pilot but it is already reshaping work inside Salesforce and across industries. Internally, Salesforce uses Agentforce 360 to handle routine tasks across sales, IT, and support, elevating employees to focus on strategy, creativity, and customer relationships.

Separately with 12,000 customers, Agentforce 360 has delivered transformative results.

Benioff said Agentforce, provisionally launched in October last year, has been the most successful product ever launched by Salesforce in its 26-year history.

‘It’s the fastest growing product in our history. There’s never been a faster growing product that we have that much already is way beyond anything we’ve been expecting,’ he told journalists attending Dreamforce 2025.

At the end of FY26 Q2, Salesforce closed over 12,500 deals since launching Agentforce and over 40% of Data Cloud and Agentforce Q2 bookings came from existing customer expansion. Its customer base is over 150,000 and employs over 76,000. In 2025, Salesforce’s annual revenue was $ 37.9 billion, up 121.63% from 2020. (NC)

Lankan digital economy estimated at Rs. 1.3 t

Sri Lanka’s digital economy is estimated at Rs. 1,342 billion, accounting for 4.5% of GDP, according to the Institute of Policy Studies’ (IPS) Annual State of the Economy 2025 report.

The report said digital businesses and online platforms are driving innovation, creating new products, and reducing transaction costs, while supporting sustainable economic growth and competitiveness.

The IPS noted that information and communication services have become a key driver of Sri Lanka’s services sector, contributing steadily to the economy in recent years.

The digital sector’s upward trajectory has been accelerated by the global shift towards digitalisation, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, which expanded demand for digital solutions.

The report said the ICT-BPO sector experienced rapid expansion between 2015 and 2020, with the number of firms tripling and the workforce doubling. ICT and BPO-related services generated about $ 850 million in revenue in 2020.

According to the last available census survey conducted in 2018, the workforce grew 51% over five years to 124,873, recording an annual growth rate of around 10%. Projections indicate the ICT, BPO, and BPM workforce will reach 300,000 by 2025, generating $ 2 billion in export earnings.

‘Sri Lanka’s ICT-BPM industry is also expected to foster the development of over 1,000 technology startups, further solidifying its position as a dynamic digital economy,’ the IPS report said.

The size of the digital economy, based on Central Bank data, is dominated by information and communication activities valued at Rs. 606.7 billion, or 2.03% of GDP, and e-commerce estimated at Rs. 735.2 billion, or 2.47% of GDP.

The report noted that the e-commerce value was calculated by doubling the total card-based transaction volume on the assumption that cash payments account for half of all online purchases.

E-commerce has become a notable driver of digital engagement in Sri Lanka.

‘Many Sri Lankan businesses have established an online presence through e-commerce platforms, social media, and dedicated websites,’ the IPS said. Rising internet penetration, improved payment gateways, and digital literacy have helped the sector grow rapidly.

In 2024, total e-commerce transactions via debit and credit cards amounted to Rs. 367.8 billion. The overall value of e-commerce transactions was estimated at Rs. 735.2 billion and is projected to grow annually at 10.8%, reaching an estimated $ 3.9 billion by 2029.

The report said consumer behaviour has also shifted in favour of online purchases, with around 52% of internet users making online purchases at least once a month.

Digital advertising plays a strong role in influencing buying decisions, with 58% of users reporting they bought products online after seeing digital ads. The most commonly purchased items were clothing at 43%, personal care and beauty products at 23%, and electronics and accessories at 22%.

The IPS identified e-services as another fast-growing area, reshaping how citizens access services such as food delivery, education, transportation, healthcare, and Government transactions. ‘E-services are becoming increasingly integrated into the daily lives of Sri Lankans, particularly in urban areas,’ the report said.

The e-services sector is forecast to expand at an annual rate of 15.7%, reaching a market volume of $ 1.9 billion and 6.4 million users by 2029. User penetration is expected to reach 23% of the population by 2025, driven by internet access, smartphone usage, and consumer receptivity to digital platforms.

The IPS said the continued evolution of e-services and e-commerce will be central to enhancing service delivery, improving efficiency, and promoting inclusive digital growth.

‘The expansion of these sectors will be key to reducing friction in economic transactions and supporting broader goals of digital inclusion and economic modernisation,’ it said.

RIUNIT to promote Sri Lanka’s real estate at London Investment Forum 2025

The Research Intelligence Unit (RIUNIT) together with the High Commission of Sri Lanka in London will hold the Sri Lanka Real Estate Investment Forum: London 2025 on Thursday, 30 October at the Sri Lanka High Commission, 13 Hyde Park Gardens, Tyburnia, London W2 2LU.

The event will take place from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. (BST), followed by networking and fellowship until 8:30 p.m.

RIUNIT has been organising international real estate forums for many years in cities around the world. The upcoming London event will be the first major overseas forum since 2023. It comes at an important time as Sri Lanka’s real estate market shows signs of new growth and stronger investor confidence.

The forum will bring together international investors, developers, government officials, and members of the Sri Lankan diaspora community living in the UK. Presentations and discussions will highlight the latest market trends, new projects, and investment opportunities in the country’s property sector.

RIUNIT CEO Roshan Madawela said: ‘The level of interest witnessed already demonstrates a surge in interest amongst the diaspora community to invest in Sri Lanka, given a favourable economic and political climate.’

The main sponsor of the event is Home Lands Skyline. The event is also supported by Port City Colombo, Cinnamon Air, and Athi Rasa, showing the wide range of industries that now connect to real estate and investment growth in Sri Lanka.

Participation is free, but seats are limited. Interested persons can register online through https://riunit.com/registration/. Inquiries can be sent to [email protected] or via WhatsApp at +44 7463 401869 / +94 7744 41117.

Foreign job departures down 5% 1H 2025

The number of Sri Lankans leaving for overseas employment dropped by 5% in the first six months of 2025 to 143,037 workers, as improving economic conditions and rising domestic wages reduced outward labour migration, according to Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) data.

In January, 25,873 people departed for foreign jobs, slightly above the 25,149 recorded a year earlier.

Departures then fell to 22,271 in February, compared to 25,737 in 2024, and to 21,552 in March, against 24,158 last year. In April, 22,011 workers left, nearly unchanged from 22,220 a year ago, while May recorded 27,142 departures, marginally lower than 28,201 in 2024.

The data show that departures have eased since February, reflecting a stabilising labour market at home following several years of high migration during the economic crisis.

Meanwhile, workers’ remittances surged to $ 695.7 million in September, marking the third-highest monthly inflow so far in 2025, according to the CBSL.

The figure reflects a 25.2% year-on-year increase and represents the sixth consecutive month of record inflows, underscoring the steady recovery of foreign worker earnings.

Cumulatively, remittances in the first nine months of 2025 rose 20% year-on-year to exceed $ 5.8 billion, the strongest performance for the period since 2020.

The year-to-date total is also 8% higher than the $ 5.38 billion recorded during the same period in 2016, which remains the year with the highest annual remittances at $ 7.24 billion.

Season opener cancelled after PGA Tour fails to find new venue

The PGA Tour has cancelled its 2026 season-opening event in Hawaii after failing to find an alternative venue to host The Sentry. The tournament, which was to be played from 8-11 January, had to be moved from the Plantation Course at Kapalua on the island of Maui because of drought conditions.

However, the PGA Tour said that, ‘having assessed alternate venues in Hawaii and beyond,’ it could not hold the tournament because of ‘logistical challenges – including shipping deadlines, tournament infrastructure and vendor support.’

The first event of next year will now be the Sony Open, scheduled from 15-18 January at the Waialae Country Club in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The Sentry, which relocated from California to Maui in 1999, was the PGA Tour’s season opener between 1986 and 2013 before returning to that slot in 2024, when the Tour switched back to a calendar-year schedule. The field at the event would have featured the top 50 players from the previous year’s FedExCup standings, as well as winners of PGA Tour events from the previous year.