Sri Lankan shares closed little changed on Wednesday, as losses in financials and consumer staples stocks offset gains in industrials.
* The CSE All-Share index ended up 0.05% at 8,096.98.
* Conglomerate Expolanka Holdings Plc and Ceylinco Insurance Plc were among the top boosts to the index, adding 1.5% and 4.5%, respectively.
* LOLC Development Finance Plc and food and soap products maker Harischandra Mills Plc were among the top drags to the index, falling 3% and 22.2%, respectively.
* The island nation reported 1,711 COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, bringing its total confirmed cases to 299,892, while deaths rose by 48 to a total of 4,195.
* Data from Johns Hopkins showed the country had fully vaccinated about 8.29% of its population so far.
* Sri Lanka will purchase another four million doses of Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccines in the first week of August, Chinese Embassy in Sri Lanka said on Wednesday.
* Trading volume on the exchange fell to 75.1 million shares from 146.6 million shares in the previous session.
* Foreign investors were net sellers in the equity market, offloading shares worth 129.1 million rupees ($650,377.83), exchange data showed.
* The equity market's turnover was 1.81 billion rupees, the exchange data further showed.
($1 = 198.5000 Sri Lankan rupees)
(Reporting by Rama Venkat in Bengaluru, additional reporting by Waruna Karunatilake in Colombo; editing by Uttaresh.V) ((ramavenkat.raman@thomsonreuters.com; https://twitter.com/ramavenkat0607;))
