Nalaka Godahewa

Nalaka Godahewa, (Sinhala: නාලක ගොඩහේවා, Tamil: நாலக கொடஹேவா, born 7 June 1965) is a Sri Lankan Businessman a Corporate Executive and a former Cabinet Minister. He was appointed as the Minister of Mass Media on 18 April 2022. Prior to that he was the State Minister Urban Development since August 2020 He was a member of parliament for the Gampaha District during August 2020 - September 2024 period . He had served as the Chairman, Securities Exchange Commission (August 2012–January 2015); Chairman, Sri Lanka Tourism (2010–2012); and Managing Director, Sri Lanka Insurance (2006–2009).

At the first election he faced after entering politics, Dr Nalaka Godahewa topped the preferential votes in the Gampaha District obtaining 325,479 votes He was ranked 3rd in the entire country in terms of the number of votes received by a candidate at the 2020 general election

Before entering politics his last state sector involvement was as the Chairman of the Securities Exchange Commission of Sri Lanka during 2012 -2015 period. Godahewa was appointed as SEC Chairman in mid 2012 after two of his predecessors, Indrani Sugathadasa and Thilak Karunaratne, had to resign within 12 months as a result of a stock market crisis during April 2011 to August 2012. According to Bloomberg statistics, within the first few weeks of Godahewa's appointment as SEC head, the market bounced back from world's worst performing stock market status to the third best performing stock market status. This prompted the business newspaper Daily FT to carry a headline "From Bust to Boom". In November 2012 Godahewa presented a three-year roadmap for capital market development in Sri Lanka. which was endorsed by key industry stakeholders as a timely, positive step in the right direction. By January 2014 Godahewa was in a position to publicly claim that "Foundation laid; time for other stakeholders to deliver" The all share price index of the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) had reached 7500 and was performing above all regional and global indices when Godahewa announced in January 2015 the vision and strategies for the market capitalization to USD 100Bn by 2020