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Pakistan clears $3.45b loan to UAE after final $1b payment: SBP | The Express Tribune
$2.45 billion had been repaid last week, bringing the total repayment to $3.45 billion
Pakistan has completed the repayment of $3.45 billion in deposits to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) after returning a final tranche of $1 billion, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) announced on Friday.
In a post on X, the SBP announced that it repaid a $1 billion deposit to the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD) on April 23. The central bank added that $2.45 billion had been repaid last week.
State Bank of Pakistan repaid deposit of US$ 1 billion to Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD) UAE on 23April2026. Deposits of $2.45 billion were repaid last week. This completes the repayment of total deposits of $3.45 billion to UAE.
— SBP (@StateBank_Pak) April 24, 2026
“This completes the repayment of total deposits of $3.45 billion to the UAE,” it further added.
With the latest transaction, Pakistan has now fully cleared the outstanding deposits owed to UAE-based institutions. The repayments come as Pakistan continues efforts to manage external financing obligations and strengthen macroeconomic stability.
Pakistan returned the $2 billion UAE debt on April 18 by taking a new debt from Saudi Arabia, bringing the total repayments to Abu Dhabi this week to $2.5 billion, according to the government officials.
The remaining $1 billion UAE debt was also settled by availing another $1 billion Saudi loan.
The finance ministry had not factored in these repayments till the end of last month and had assured the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that its external financing requirements were fully met on the back of rollovers by China, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, showed the fresh details.
Former prime minister Imran Khan’s government had taken the $2 billion loan in 2018 to sustain the foreign exchange reserves that were on a downward trajectory due to a delay in reaching a deal with the IMF. Another $450 million UAE loan that Islamabad paid early this week had been taken in 1996-97 for a one-year period, which Pakistan returned after 30 years.
There would not be any negative impact on the foreign exchange reserves that are hovering around $15 billion, as the debt is being repaid by contracting new debt.
Saudi Arabia has also extended the existing $5 billion cash deposit-based debt for two years, said the officials. Pakistan was earlier paying 4% interest rate on Saudi loans, and it is not clear whether the extension and the new $3 billion debt were given at the existing or the new rates.
Read More: Pakistan returns $2 billion more to UAE
The UAE’s decision to demand its money back had created a $3.5 billion hole. The finance ministry officials said that the government had not factored in the UAE repayment, and it last month assured the IMF that “based on existing financing commitments from bilateral and multilateral partners, the (IMF) programme is fully financed for the next 12 months”.
It had further assured the IMF in March that, as committed at the outset of the Extended Fund Facility, Pakistan’s bilateral partners will also continue rolling over short-term claims, including loans, swaps and deposits, for the duration of the programme.
Under the $7 billion IMF programme, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and China had committed to maintaining their combined $12.5 billion in cash deposits with the SBP at least until the programme expires in September next year.
The Express Tribune had reported in January that the UAE rolled over $2 billion for one month. Pakistan had sought a two-year rollover and an interest rate of around 3%. But the UAE rolled it over then at the old terms of 6.5% interest rate.
A “For Lease” sign in the Financial District of San Francisco, California, US, on Wednesday, May 3, 2023.
Jason Henry | Bloomberg | Getty Images
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Despite the war with Iran and continued economic uncertainty in the U.S., demand for office space is recovering at a strong clip.
In the first quarter of this year, new in-person and virtual office tours reached their highest level since the pandemic began, as measured by the VTS Office Demand Index. The index is a future indicator of lease signings about a year or more out.
The index rose 18% from the fourth quarter 2025 and 13% from the same quarter one year ago.
“Although tested against a turbulent backdrop, demand for office space has seen an exceptional start to the year,” Nick Romito, CEO of commercial real estate software company VTS, said in a release. “What perhaps is most notable about this quarter’s positive performance is that it was led not just by tech’s sustained AI boom – but also by finance and legal companies entering the market as well.”
The surge in demand is curious, given that office-using employment is still down 2% from 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Usually, that would result in less office demand, but the drop in employment could also be giving employers more leverage to get workers back into the office.
Nationally, for all buildings, the office vacancy rate fell 14 basis points to 22.2% in the first quarter of this year from the previous quarter and is down 30 basis points from the last peak in Q2 2025, according to a report from JLL, a commercial real estate services and investment management company. Vacancy remains hyper-concentrated predominantly in larger-scale, aging buildings with financially constrained owners, with 10% of office buildings comprising more than 60% of total national vacancy.
As with everything in real estate, the office recovery is local. San Francisco and New York City are leading office demand, as AI tech employment rises quickly in the former and diversity of employment fuels the latter. Los Angeles also saw double-digit increases in demand on a quarterly basis, fueled by significant growth in the creative industry, according to VTS.
Cities seeing weaker demand include Boston, which was the worst-performing market in the report. Life science offices have taken a hit in that city, due to significant government funding cuts.
In addition, demand is contracting in Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Chicago, as they are not seeing strong employment growth.
“The AI boom continues to be a dominant headline for office, and markets that lack a major tech presence, or are without a primary growth lever in another industry, are seeing declines in demand,” Ryan Masiello, chief strategy officer of VTS, said in a release. “LA’s positive performance this time around was a new bright spot – and it remains to be seen if Los Angeles can sustain growth in the near term.”
Protesters have forced NatWest to halt its shareholder meeting, as the bank’s chairman defended its climate policy in response to investors claiming it has “backtracked” on commitments.
The annual general meeting (AGM) was being held on Tuesday morning but had to be stopped for about half an hour amid disruption during chairman Rick Haythornthwaite’s opening speech.
Protesters were singing and making statements about NatWest’s climate policies.
The boss heard a statement presented by ShareAction, backed by investors managing 1.4 trillion US dollars (£1 trillion) in assets, including the Church of England Pensions Board, Greater Manchester Pension Fund and Rathbones Investment Management.
The statement said investors are “concerned by the bank’s changed outlook on climate change” having “reduced the ambition of its fossil fuel policy and climate targets”.
“The bank dropped its commitment not to finance oil and gas majors lacking a credible transition plan or failing to report their overall emissions,” it said.
It called for Mr Haythornthwaite to meet the group of shareholders to discuss the bank’s climate strategy.
Campaigners including ShareAction are also calling for shareholders to vote against the re-election of the bank’s chair over concerns of climate backtracking, which the Church of England’s pensions body said it plans to do.
Mr Haythornthwaite responded to the statements saying that he “takes climate change very seriously, as does all of this board” and that he was happy to meet the group.
“We’ve had to wrestle with the questions of how do we balance supporting our customers in their transition efforts with managing the risks in what is an increasingly complex policy environment,” he said.
He stressed that the bank’s “overwhelming” balance of lending was on renewables and that oil and gas financing comprises 0.6% of total lending.
NatWest also retained targets to at least halve the climate impact of its financing activity by 2030, against a 2019 baseline.
“I don’t want to take what sounds like a backtracking as a major shift,” Mr Haythornthwaite said, adding that “these targets matter”.
The battle between the AI big hitters has largely played out on social media. Now it is coming to the courtroom.
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