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Major Japanese business group sees long-term potential in Hunas Holdings as the two organisations explore new opportunities for growth in Sri Lanka
Hunas Holdings PLC is entering a new phase of growth through a collaborative partnership with CCH Co., Ltd. (CCH INC.), a major Tokyo-based business group with experience across business process outsourcing (BPO), in-house services, investment, mergers and acquisitions, and business development.
The partnership follows a period in which Hunas Holdings maintained a measured approach to new investments amid volatile market conditions, focusing on identifying the right opportunities and international relationships capable of creating sustainable long-term value.
Founded in Japan in 2008, CCH has grown into a significant and diversified business group with interests across multiple industries. Its approach combines investment with M&A, business development and operational expertise, enabling the company to play an active role in the businesses and markets it enters.
For CCH, the partnership represents an opportunity to bring this experience to Sri Lanka through Hunas Holdings, an established local group with a strong platform and long-term growth ambitions.
Yoshihiko Tanabe, Director of CCH Co., Ltd., said: “Through our discussions with Hunas Holdings, we see a company with strong foundations, local expertise and a clear ambition for growth. We believe there is meaningful potential in bringing the strengths of CCH and Hunas Holdings together. I am excited about this partnership, and particularly about some of the projects and opportunities we are already exploring together. There is much to look forward to soon”
For Hunas Holdings, the collaboration marks a renewed chapter of investment and international partnership, while for CCH, it reflects confidence in Hunas Holdings and the opportunities presented by the Sri Lankan market.
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In an unvarnished and deeply practical address delivered at the Breast Cancer Symposium at Hemas Hospital Wattala on Oct. 28, Senior Lecturer and Consultant Specialist Dr. Kanchana Wijesinghe confronted a familiar societal paradox: the effortless willingness of individuals to finance luxury food orders, designer attire, and cosmetics, contrasted against sudden hesitation when asked to invest modest resources into routine health screenings.
Analysing the core of her presentation, Dr. Wijesinghe laid bare how lifestyle habits often eclipse preventive healthcare, urging women and their families to fundamentally reallocate their financial choices toward timely medical interventions.
“We have no problem spending on food orders, clothes, and makeup. But when it comes to screening, people hesitate. We must change this mindset and make preventive breast screening an absolute priority in our personal budgets,” she emphasised.
Directly addressing clinical realities, Dr. Kanchana Wijesinghe highlighted that breast abnormalities can develop at any age, noting that women over 20 should establish a monthly self-examination routine a few days after menstruation. Too often, patients ignore early signs until lumps grow significantly into Stage 2 or Stage 3, transforming what could have been a manageable medical interception into an aggressive therapeutic battle.
“We want to catch it in Stage 1, where it is tiny and treatment is exceptionally effective,” Dr. Wijesinghe explained during the symposium. “If women wait until symptoms progress due to fear or shyness, treatments become far more demanding.”
She outlined a three-pillar detection roadmap:
Self-Breast Examination (SBE): Recommended monthly for all women over 20, performed a few days post-menstruation.
Clinical Breast Examination (CBE): An essential annual evaluation by a qualified medical doctor for women over 40.
Screening Mammography: Recommended every two years for women over 40 to intercept microcalcifications before a physical lump forms.
Addressing the emotional and psychological barriers surrounding a cancer diagnosis, Dr. Wijesinghe forcefully dismantled the fatalistic myth that discovering a lump signals the end of a normal life. Citing clinical outcomes among both younger and older cohorts, she stressed that modern surgical and oncological advancements – including reconstructive procedures – allow women to successfully undergo treatment and return entirely to vibrant, healthy lives.
Concluding her address, Dr. Wijesinghe issued a direct call to action to the husbands, mothers, and daughters present at Hemas Hospital Wattala: “Take personal responsibility, utilise available screening methods without delay, and ensure that personal expenditure supports long-term survival rather than temporary indulgence.”
Five-day programme focused on inclusive finance, enterprise development, women’s economic participation and sustainable funding
DFCC Bank further strengthened its regional development-finance relationships by recently hosting representatives of Bhutan Development Bank Limited and the Asian Development Bank’s Bhutan Resident Mission for a five-day knowledge-sharing programme.
The programme focused on inclusive finance, SME and MSME development, women-focused banking and sustainable funding. It enabled the participating institutions to exchange experience, examine approaches that could be adapted across markets and explore opportunities for continued cooperation.
With a development-finance heritage spanning more than seven decades, DFCC Bank has extensive experience supporting Sri Lankan enterprises through different stages of growth. Established as the country’s pioneer development finance institution, the Bank was created to direct long-term capital towards businesses and industries capable of contributing to national development.
While DFCC Bank has since evolved into a commercial bank, this perspective continues to influence its work across enterprise development, sustainable finance, project finance and international funding partnerships. Its approach has also expanded to address the financial and non-financial barriers affecting women’s economic participation.
Delivering the inaugural lecture of the SAU-RCSS South Asia Dialogue, Former Foreign Secretary H.M.G.S.Palihakkara has observed that SAARC seems to have gradually but inevitably, ‘normalized’ non-cooperation and they could instead use flexible, variable-geometry arrangements while keeping the wider regional framework open. Contending that this is a best practice of other regions, he called for the removal of the ’unanimity’ requirement which operates like a veto, from the ‘consensus’ rule in SAARC, so that everybody does not have to agree on everything, but can reach common ground on economics, with reservations concerning unbridgeable issues.
Ambassador Palihakkara made these observations speaking on the theme ‘Regional Cooperation: Reflections on SAARC and Beyond’, during the South Asia Dialogue – a new joint initiative launched on 23 October 2026, by the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies (RCSS) located in Colombo, Sri Lanka and the South Asian University (SAU), New Delhi, India. Held from the RCSS office with esteemed guests present physically, it connected virtually with SAU students and faculty, RCSS members, alumni and friends spread across the world, and other South Asia watchers. The discussion was chaired by Professor Chaminda Padmakumara of the Department of International Relations, University of Colombo and the first Sri Lankan Ph.D awardee from the SAU, who commended the initiation of the South Asia Dialogue.
In opening remarks RCSS Executive Director and Co-Convenor Ambassador Ravinatha Aryasinha noted that the SAU-RCSS Memorandum of Understanding signed on 31 August 2026 and the South Asia Dialogue initiated, were in pursuance of the founding principles of both institutions – to strengthen South Asian identity and to collaborate in independent research, policy debates, and publications, particularly connecting young scholars from SAARC countries.
The President, South Asian University saw the event as an outcome of the MOU and underlined how spaces for dialogical engagement were the at the core of this partnership, and reaffirmed South Asian University’s mandate to build knowledge across borders. He underlined SAU’s firm commitment to build transformative networks of change across South Asia and saw the SAU-RCSS taking the vision forward. Dr Shweta Singh, Associate Professor, Faculty of International Studies, and co-convenor of the series, highlighted that the idea of this South Asia Dialogue series was to bring together academics, scholars, practitioners, young people in conversation on the idea of ‘South Asia’ and beyond. She underlined that this is pertinent as we move away from cartographic traps, to think about South Asia as an epistemic category, with its unique history, culture, politics, and ‘lived experience’.
Elaborating on the theme, Ambassador Palihakkara pointed out that regional organizations that have been successful such as the ASEAN, not only had different regime and governance styles, but had also not eliminated every territorial and political dispute among its members before launching economic cooperation. However, they developed mechanisms that did not predicate economic cooperation on resolving political disputes. They have thus achieved flourishing cooperation and trade within the region and today command not only economic, but also geopolitical and strategic agency among the giants—China, as well as the West. He observed in this regard that SAARC has much to learn from the ASEAN’s ‘art of the deal’ to depoliticize economics and economize on politics. Trust, in other words, is not sentimental. It is an economic variable.
Ambassador Palihakkara noting that many express the opinion that SAARC remains hostage to the Pakistan-India adversarial relationship, with Indian diplomatic opinion arguing that Pakistan resistance and cross-border terrorism militate against regional collectivity and integration – which of course deserves to be taken seriously by Pakistan. He also noted that India’s own diplomats have also criticized India’s role in the region as well, where in addition to the asymmetry, India has been ‘too calculative on short term costs and a narrowly conceived approach on regional cooperation. He said, beyond short-term costs, India seems to overlook the long-term strategic advantage of collective prosperity through regional cooperation.
He contended that small countries Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives also calculate. While there is an opportunity, at the same time dealing with a colossus, brings economic, security, geopolitical implications. So, smaller states while needing access to India’s market, justifiably or otherwise also fear coercive dependence and loss of sovereignty and strategic autonomy for themselves in their public policy choices. Hence India must not expect sovereign assets or strategic loyalty as kickbacks for economic partnership. He observed that thematic considerations will also militate against the successful regional cooperation, as countries will hesitate to invest in regional infrastructure if politics can suddenly destroy the economic calculations – as businesses cannot build reliable supply chains if customs rules can be disrupted because of political differences. Smaller countries will also be cautious if dependence on a dominant neighbor could become unmanageable, hence trust becomes an economic variable and is important.
During the discussion responding to questions on China’s role within the region and the Belt and Road Initiative, Ambassador Palihakkara noted that, no small nation in South Asia will play the China card against India, or the India card against China. India too has been recalibrating its relationship with China, expanding investments in partnership with China. He noted that every South Asian country should support India’s rule-based rise, and if democratic India’s ascent is peaceful and rules-based, it is not a threat to be feared but an opportunity to be seized.
Questions were also raised by students from SAU whether people to people diplomacy can overcome the stalled regionalism of SAARC; how India could build trust among South Asian states via the structural advantages of regionalism without raising concerns regarding asymmetries; and why they are looking to build alternatives to SAARC? Ambassador Palihakkara noted that if alternative cooperation is pragmatically done, with no geopolitical intentions but based on economic advantage, no country should have an issue. He added, that while trade builds constituencies for stability, connected grids, cross-border supply chains, easier travel, and professional exchanges like what the SAU-RCSS collaboration is doing, makes disruption more costly. That is how it encourages cooperation. Besides ASEAN, the European and African insight goes to show how to achieve advanced regional cooperation, which also makes conflict increasingly irrational for modern state behavior.
Dr. Dhananjay Tripathi, Associate Dean of the Faculty of International Studies at SAU who delivered the closing remarks, whilst highlighting the importance of people-to-people interaction and the need to build institutions similar to the SAU where people can come together, noted that although history and memory still play a significant role in state interactions, people can still come together where states manage to accommodate. The Vote of Thanks was delivered by Ms. Chamika Wijesuriya, Research/Programme Officer, RCSS, also a graduate of the SAU.
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