{"id":92194,"date":"2019-08-13T23:08:06","date_gmt":"2019-08-14T05:08:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=92194"},"modified":"2019-08-13T15:52:24","modified_gmt":"2019-08-13T22:52:24","slug":"sri-lanka-shares-gain-after-wartime-defense-chief-launches-presidential-bid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/08\/13\/sri-lanka-shares-gain-after-wartime-defense-chief-launches-presidential-bid\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka shares gain after wartime defense chief launches presidential bid"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy London South East<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>COLOMBO, Aug 13 (Reuters) &#8211; Sri Lankan shares closed marginally higher on Tuesday, easing from early gains of 1.2%, after the main opposition party named a hardline former defence chief as presidential candidate, seeking to capitalise on public clamour for a decisive leader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>** The rupee ended slightly weaker on importer greenback demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>** The benchmark stock index gained 1.26% as soon as&nbsp;trading&nbsp;resumed on Tuesday. Markets were closed for a holiday on Monday. The index ended 0.1% firmer at 5,949.30, its highest close since July 30. It gained 0.82% last week. ** Gotabaya Rajapaksa, 70, served under his older brother, ex-president Mahinda Rajapaksa, and is widely seen as the frontrunner in a presidential election that must be held before Dec 9. Gotabaya is immensely popular among Sri Lanka&#8217;s powerful Sinhala Buddhist majority, who credit him with ending the island nation&#8217;s 26-year-long civil war in 2009 and believe Colombo needs a seasoned hand after the April 21 bombings. nL4N256051] ** Market sources said early gains could not be sustained as retail investors sold shares.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>** So far this year, the index dropped about 1.7 %.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>** Turnover was 2.69 billion rupees ($15.21 million), more than six times of this year&#8217;s daily&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy London South East COLOMBO, Aug 13 (Reuters) &#8211; Sri Lankan shares closed marginally higher on Tuesday, easing from early gains of 1.2%, after the main opposition party named a hardline former defence chief as presidential candidate, seeking to capitalise on public clamour for a decisive leader. ** The rupee ended slightly weaker on importer [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92194\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}