LANKATILES marked another significant milestone in its journey with the opening of its 61st showroom in Mount Lavinia, bringing its distinctive portfolio of design-led surface solutions to one of Colombo’s most celebrated coastal destinations. The new showroom reflects the brand’s commitment to helping customers translate the natural beauty, relaxed character and timeless elegance of coastal living into contemporary interior and exterior spaces.

Located at No. 280 A, Galle Road, Mount Lavinia, the new LANKATILES showroom has been designed as a contemporary design destination where homeowners, architects, interior designers, developers and other industry professionals can explore an extensive range of premium wall and floor solutions under one roof.

The opening ceremony was graced by Chief Guest, Architect Jayanath Silva, together with Priyantha Talwatte, Managing Director of LANKATILES, senior management representatives and distinguished guests from Sri Lanka’s architecture, construction, design and business communities.

Commenting on the opening, Priyantha Talwatte, Managing Director of LANKATILES, stated, “Mount Lavinia has a unique identity where heritage, coastal living and contemporary urban lifestyles come together. Our 61st showroom has been created to respond to that character by giving homeowners, architects and designers greater access to collections that can transform both indoor and outdoor spaces. As LANKATILES continues to grow, our focus remains on bringing inspiring design, innovation and trusted quality closer to our customers while enabling them to create spaces that reflect the way they want to live.”

Thyaga has introduced Greetly, a new greeting card gifting solution designed to make everyday gifting more thoughtful, convenient, and useful for both the giver and the receiver.

Greetly brings together two things people already love: the personal touch of a greeting card and the freedom of a Thyaga voucher. Each Greetly card comes with a Thyaga voucher inside, allowing customers to turn a simple greeting into a meaningful gift that the recipient can actually choose and enjoy.

The product was created to solve a common gifting problem. Greeting cards are thoughtful, but often the gesture ends with the message. Traditional gifts, on the other hand, can be difficult to choose, especially when the giver is unsure of what the recipient really wants. Greetly bridges that gap by keeping the emotional value of a card while adding the flexibility of a multi-merchant gift voucher.

Using Greetly is simple. Customers can purchase a Greetly card, scan the QR code on the packaging, top up the Thyaga voucher with their preferred amount, write a personal message, and gift it to someone special. The recipient can then redeem the voucher across Thyaga’s wide merchant network, giving them the freedom to choose from multiple brands and categories.

This makes Greetly suitable for a wide range of occasions including birthdays, thank-you moments, congratulations, farewells, festive gifting, last-minute gifting, and everyday appreciation. It also gives customers a practical solution when they want to gift something more meaningful than a card, but more flexible than a fixed product.

A key part of Greetly’s value is convenience. By making the product available through retail locations and selected online channels, Thyaga is making smart gifting easier to access during everyday shopping moments. Customers no longer need to plan far ahead or visit multiple places to arrange a thoughtful gift. They can simply pick up a Greetly card, top it up, and gift it with ease.

by Sanath Nanayakkare

“There is no shortcut to sustainable reserve accumulation,” Central Bank Governor Dr. P. Nandalal Weerasinghe said yesterday, warning that rebuilding Sri Lanka’s foreign-exchange buffers must be underpinned by sound economic fundamentals, policy credibility and institutional discipline rather than short-term fixes.

Addressing the inaugural Reserve Management Conference 2026 in Colombo, Dr.Weerasinghe said the task of building reserves had become increasingly difficult as geopolitical fragmentation, trade tensions, sanctions, volatile commodity prices, changing interest-rate cycles and rapidly shifting capital flows reshape the global financial environment.

For Sri Lanka, which experienced the consequences of depleted reserves during the 2022 economic crisis, the issue is particularly important.

“When reserves become critically low,” the Governor said, the consequences extend well beyond the Central Bank’s balance sheet. Imports become constrained, debt servicing becomes difficult, exchange-rate pressures intensify, inflationary pressures can increase and confidence deteriorates.

Most importantly, he said, the policy space available to respond to further shocks becomes severely constrained.

Foreign reserves should therefore be viewed not simply as financial assets but as a country’s “first line of defence” against external shocks, providing confidence, policy space and the ability to meet essential external obligations.

But Weerasinghe cautioned that reserve accumulation was not a linear process. A country could build reserves during favourable periods only to see them drawn down rapidly by an external shock.

The more important questions, therefore, were how resilient the reserves were, how accessible they were, how quickly they could be mobilised and whether they would be sufficient for the next shock.

Sri Lanka has made considerable progress since the crisis, with macroeconomic stabilisation and structural reforms strengthening the external sector compared with the difficult period of 2022–2023, he said.

However, sustainable reserve accumulation could not be separated from the broader macroeconomic policy framework.

Foreign exchange generated through exports, tourism, remittances, services and capital inflows ultimately provides the foundation for stronger reserves. When foreign-exchange inflows exceed outflows, reserves can rise, but maintaining that process while preserving exchange-rate flexibility, price stability, external debt-servicing capacity and market confidence remains a delicate policy challenge.

Dr.Weerasinghe warned against relying excessively on central-bank intervention, monetary expansion or external borrowing to rebuild buffers. Such measures could distort market signals, generate inflationary pressures or simply create future debt-service obligations.

“The most sustainable reserve accumulation strategy is therefore not simply to acquire reserves,” he said. “It is to build an economy that naturally generates and retains foreign exchange.”

The Governor said geopolitical risk had now become an integral part of reserve management. Strategic competition among major economies, sanctions and financial fragmentation were forcing reserve managers to reconsider the risks associated with particular currencies, jurisdictions and financial markets.

Although the US dollar continues to dominate international trade, finance and global reserves, diversification has a role to play. But diversification for its own sake could reduce liquidity and operational efficiency, he cautioned.

For official reserves, safety and liquidity must remain paramount, particularly because reserves may have to be deployed precisely when financial markets are under severe stress.

Sri Lanka’s vulnerability to energy and geopolitical shocks also makes the issue particularly acute. As an energy-importing country, a sharp rise in global oil prices can rapidly increase the import bill. At the same time, geopolitical tensions can weaken tourism and other sources of foreign exchange, producing the potentially damaging combination of rising outflows and declining inflows.

Climate-related disasters could create similar pressures by disrupting agriculture, infrastructure, tourism and imports.

Dr. Weerasinghe said reserve adequacy should therefore no longer be judged by a single number or conventional indicator such as import cover. Short-term external liabilities, debt-service requirements, capital-flow volatility, exchange-rate flexibility, contingent financing and the probability and magnitude of external shocks should also be considered.

He also highlighted the growing role of gold, technology and artificial intelligence in reserve management, while stressing that innovation should never compromise safety and liquidity.

Ultimately, the Governor said, reserves were not managed simply to earn a return but to protect economic stability and preserve confidence.

“Buffers must be built before they are needed,” he said, “because by the time an external crisis arrives, it may already be too late to begin building them”.