SBP buys $9.7bn from interbank market in 16 months – Daily Times
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“We’re working on some of the detailed plans around it and we’ve been invited to Downing Street to present to the government,” he said.
“We’re finalising all of the arrangements of going down… but it’s fair to say there’s a lot of national government interest in it.
“We’ve also got some great stakeholders that are really keen to make sure we make it a success.”
In August it was revealed that Liverpool-born television producer Jimmy Mulville was part of a group working with Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotheram and industry experts to include an education hub at the site.
Developer Capital & Centric (C&C) also revealed in the summer that it had entered into discussions about securing government funding.
C&C warned the cost of delivering the project “in the current climate exceeds the value of the completed development”.
Its co-founder Tim Heatley said talks had been ongoing with ministers to “explore potential options for gap funding”.
The Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, which has so far committed up to £17m, said it would work with the government, city council and C&C to obtain the required funding.
The viaduct will replace two cast-iron bridges that were built by Joseph Butler & Co in Leeds in 1847.
While the Victorian bridges have been deemed no longer suitable for use, they are Grade II listed and will remain in place when the new viaduct opens.
The new nine-span structure is being manufactured from Corten steel, a high-strength material that develops a rusty brown colour and does not need continuous painting.
A 12,000-tonne crane is being used to swing each individual span into position on eight supporting pillars.
Close to the viaduct, Ravensthorpe Station has been closed by Network Rail as part of the upgrade work.
The station is being rebuilt at a nearby location so more trains can stop there and will include a footbridge with lifts, a new forecourt and improved drop-off facilities. It will reopen in March 2028.
Network Rail’s Transpennine Route Upgrade, which is due to be completed in the early 2030s, will see the line between York and Manchester fully electrified.
First-time buyers are expected to drive the UK housing market in 2026, with further interest rate cuts likely to improve stretched affordability.
The for-sale market should accelerate moderately, with prices rising by 2% to 4%, while rent rises are likely to slow from the rapid increases of recent years, according to lenders and estate agents.
With mortgage rates falling, earnings growth running ahead of inflation, and house prices rising slowly, monthly mortgage costs for first-time buyers as a share of income are at their lowest level since 2022, according to Halifax.
House prices across the country rose less than expected in 2025, after a stamp duty tax break expired at the end of March and buyer confidence was knocked first by Donald Trump’s tariffs in April, and later by speculation around property tax changes before Rachel Reeves’s budget in late November.
Property values climbed by 1.8% in the year to November, leaving the average home valued at £272,998, according to Nationwide building society. Lenders and estate agents estimate between 1% and 2% house price growth for 2025, less than the 3%-plus rises they predicted a year ago, and below the rate of inflation, now 3.2%.
“Uncertainty around the budget pretty much killed the market in the second half of 2025, so we were kind of just treading water,” said Marcus Dixon, the head of residential research at JLL. When inflation is taken into account, house prices are falling in real terms, “which for affordability, it’s not necessarily a negative”, he added.
UK house price growth chart
The Bank of England, faced with high inflation, has also been slower to cut interest rates than expected.
With inflation cooling, it delivered a pre-Christmas cut, taking borrowing costs to their lowest in almost three years. Economists expect two further cuts in 2026, and lenders have already acted by offering a number of fixed-rate mortgages below 4%, with the best deal at 3.55% for a two-year fix with a 40% deposit, from Santander.
Forecasts for house price rises next year are concentrated at the lower end of between 2% and 4%, followed by 4% growth in 2027 and rises of up to 5.5% in 2028. Predictions come from the leading mortgage lenders Nationwide and Halifax, the estate agents Savills, JLL, Knight Frank and Hamptons, and the property websites Rightmove and Zoopla.
In London, house prices have been falling, and are expected to flatline in 2026. With prices rising strongly in northern England, the north-south divide in property values has narrowed to its smallest since 2013, according to Nationwide.
Mortgage rules have been relaxed, allowing buyers to take out bigger mortgages with smaller deposits, alongside looser affordability stress tests, and the City watchdog has just announced plans to help first-time buyers and self-employed people get on the property ladder.
“Buyers might be able to purchase with a 15% or 10% deposit, and that makes a huge difference, particularly in London and the south-east,” said Emily Williams, a director of residential research at Savills. “That’s certainly knocking two or three years off the amount of time that you need to save for deposits.”
The Nationwide chief economist, Robert Gardner, said that while in 2023, for a typical first-time buyer with a 20% deposit, the mortgage payment was above 38% of pay, it was now 33%, closer to the long-term average of 30%. He expected this ratio to fall further in 2026.
Hamptons said first-time buyers accounted for a third of all purchases in 2025, a record high, and half of all deals in London. Aneisha Beveridge, its head of research, said: “First-time buyers are becoming a real kind of key driving force in the housing market. But that partly reflects the fact that other people aren’t moving as often because stamp duty costs are so high.”
Williams said that as the Renters’ Rights Act gave tenants more safeguards, some landlords were selling up, and a lot of these properties were going to first-time buyers because they tended to be smaller and cheaper.
The budget brought a high-value council tax surcharge – also known as the “mansion tax” – for £2m-plus homes from April 2028, but this was not as sizeable as feared. With the budget out of the way, JLL said its central London sales business was the busiest in 17 months in November.
However, the market remains slow – it takes more than 200 days for a home to sell from listing to exchange, compared with 150 days normally, Dixon said. The unemployment rate has risen to a four-year high of 5.1% and the economic outlook is lacklustre, which will drag on buyer confidence.
For tenants, average rent increases are expected to slow further, to between 2% and 3.5% in 2026. Official figures showed average UK monthly private rents rose by 5% to £1,360 in the year to October.
However, with a shortage of new rental homes and high tenant demand, “even though rental growth will slow, growth is probably going to come down fairly slowly, and that’s certainly what we’ve seen in the last few quarters”, said Gardner.
The force said the closures followed a wider three-week operation to counteract money laundering and organised crime and 36 businesses were visited.
The shops served closure orders were:
Euro Shop, in Lincoln Road, Millfield – partial closure between 9 December and 8 March, prohibiting it from selling tobacco products and cigarettes during this period
Gaffy Food Store, in Newark Avenue, Dogsthorpe, Peterborough – full closure between 3 December and 14 January
Hana Express in Burghley Road, Peterborough city centre – partial closure between 3 December and 3 March, prohibiting it from selling vapes, cigarettes, and alcohol during this period
International Food Centre, in Lincoln Road, Peterborough city centre – full closure between 18 December and 22 January
International, in Fitzwilliam Street, Peterborough city centre – full closure between 11 December and 15 January
Det Insp Shish Thind said: “I hope this shows the community that we are working to combat money laundering and its associated organised criminality.
“During the periods of these orders, we will monitor them closely to ensure all conditions are being adhered to, and any breaches will be dealt with robustly.”
The force said a further three firms were issued with community protection warnings.
Any further breaches would result in additional action against them, it added.
Gold was steady on Wednesday but remained on track for its strongest annual gain in over four decades, while other precious metals fell sharply as investors booked profits after a strong, record-setting rally.
Spot gold was steady at $4,345.75 per ounce as of 0404 GMT after hitting a record high of $4,549.71 on Friday.
US gold futures for February delivery lost 0.5% to $4,365.0/oz. Bullion has climbed 66% in 2025, marking its largest annual gain since 1979 when prices were driven higher by geopolitical factors, including the Iranian revolution.
Gold’s rally has been driven by interest rate cuts and bets of further easing by the US Federal Reserve, geopolitical conflicts, robust demand from central banks and rising holdings in exchange-traded funds.
However, analysts said that recent declines in precious metals were linked to technical factors alongside thin trading.
“CME announced an increase in margins on metals futures and that was a very painful adjustment for (precious metals on Monday), it seems we have very thin markets here with the holidays,” Ilya Spivak, head of global macro at Tastylive, said.
The US dollar rose to a more than one-week high, making greenback-priced bullion more expensive for other currency holders.
Minutes from the Fed’s December meeting showed policymakers agreed to cut interest rates only after a deeply nuanced debate, though traders expect two more reductions next year.
Low interest rate environments typically support non-yielding assets such as gold.
“Maybe towards the end of the first (quarter of 2026), we could see (gold) test $5,000. Certainly, it seems like the sort of catalysts animating gold, especially over the course of the past year, have become self-sustaining,” Spivak said.
Spot silver fell 4.5% to $73.06 per ounce on Wednesday after hitting an all-time high of $83.62 on Monday.
Silver has gained over 150% year-to-date, far outpacing gold, and is set for its best year ever. The metal broke multiple milestones in 2025, supported by its designation as a critical U.S. mineral, supply constraints, low inventories and rising industrial and investment demand. With the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq all ticking down between a tenth and a quarter of a percent.
Spot platinum shed 6.1% to $2,065.80 per ounce after rising to a lifetime high of $2,478.50 on Monday. It is up over 120% for the year, its strongest gain ever. Palladium fell 7.1% to $1,496.75 per ounce, set to close the year up 65%, its best performance in 15 years.
The State Bank of Pakistan’s foreign exchange intervention reached $6.9 billion in the one-year period from October 2024 to September 2025, following its latest dollar purchase from the interbank market.
The central bank purchased $1 billion from the interbank foreign exchange market in September 2025, marking an increase in its market intervention compared with August, when net purchases stood at $257 million.
Despite the dollar purchases, the SBP met its external payment obligations during the month, including repayment of a $500 million international bond in September 2025.
The central bank had earlier told analysts, following its Monetary Policy Committee meeting, that it increased foreign exchange purchases from September onwards due to improved balance-of-payments conditions and better liquidity in the interbank market.
As of December 19, 2025, Pakistan’s total liquid foreign exchange reserves stood at $21.023 billion. Of this, reserves held by the SBP amounted to $15.903 billion, while net foreign reserves with commercial banks stood at $5.120 billion.
The SBP’s reserves are projected to rise steadily to $17 billion by the end of June 2026, supported by expected official inflows, including disbursements under IMF programmes, potential international debt issuances such as Eurobonds, Panda Bonds and Sukuk, as well as rollovers of deposits and loans from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and China.
Pakistan’s current account balance is projected at 0–1% of GDP in FY26, with remittances expected to exceed $40 billion, easing pressure on the external account.
Total external debt servicing requirements for FY26 are estimated at $25.8 billion, comprising $21.4 billion in principal repayments and $4 billion in interest. Of this amount, $4.4 billion has already been repaid, while rollovers worth about $5.3 billion have been secured. From the remaining $15.3 billion, around $9.3 billion is expected to be rolled over.
SINGAPORE: The U.S. dollar held steady on Wednesday but was headed for its biggest annual drop since 2017 as interest rate cuts, fiscal worries and erratic trade policies under U.S. President Donald Trump cast a shadow on currency markets in 2025.
Many of those worries are likely to remain in 2026, suggesting the dollar’s dire performance could extend and underpin the behaviour of some of its rivals, including the euro and sterling, that have made significant gains this year.
Adding to the dollar’s woes, concerns about the Federal Reserve’s independence under the Trump administration remain in focus. Trump said he plans to announce his pick for the next Fed chair sometime in January, replacing Jerome Powell whose term ends in May and who has faced constant bashing from the president.
That backdrop has kept the “sell-dollar” trade firmly in place with positioning remaining net-short since April, according to Commodity Futures Trading Commission data.
Japanese markets are closed for the rest of the week, and with most markets closed on Thursday for the New Year’s Day holiday, volumes are likely to be razor-thin.
The euro was steady at $1.1747 and the pound last bought $1.3463 on the last trading day of the year. Both are poised for their biggest yearly gains in eight years.
The dollar index , which measures the U.S. currency versus six other major units, was at 98.228, holding onto its overnight gains. The index has declined 9.5% in 2025 while the euro gained 13.5% and the pound surged 7.6%.
Prashant Newnaha, senior Asia-Pacific rates strategist at TD Securities, said the bearish dollar thesis for 2026 remains a well-subscribed view with “short dollars vs EUR and the AUD expected to perform”.
The greenback got a bit of a boost in the previous session after minutes of the Fed’s December meeting showed deep divisions among policymakers as they cut rates earlier this month.
Traders are pricing in two cuts for 2026, although the central bank itself has projected just one more next year.
Goldman Sachs strategists said the dollar probably will weaken next year against the backdrop of solid global growth, and rate cuts from the Fed with other central banks standing pat.
“But it is probably a much shallower move … greater concern around a labour market recession, deeper cuts or a sharp derating in U.S. tech exceptionalism could see a larger move lower,” they said in a note.
The dollar’s weakness in 2025 has helped push many of the major currencies as well as emerging markets to strong gains for the year.
China’s yuan broke through the key psychological level of seven to the dollar on Tuesday for the first time in 2-1/2 years, defying weaker central bank guidance. The currency is on course for a 4% increase in the year, its sharpest gain since 2020.
Fragile Yen The Outlier
The Japanese yen is one of the few currencies that failed to take advantage of the soft dollar in 2025, broadly flat for the year even as the Bank of Japan raised rates twice during the period, once in January and another earlier this month.
On Wednesday, the yen was steady at 156.35 per U.S. dollar, slowly grinding away from the levels that brought intervention worries and severe jawboning from officials in Tokyo.
Investors have been disappointed with the slow and cautious pace of monetary tightening, with the significant long yen position in April completely reversing by the end of the year.
As 2026 unfolds we suspect that the conditions for a retracement back lower in dollar-yen should materialise, said MUFG strategists. “The lower U.S. yields go, the greater the chance that the yen could see its safe-haven status revived.”
“If momentum turns, expectations will slowly start to shift, leading to behavioural changes and greater appetite for buying the yen,” they said, forecasting the yen to trade at 146 per U.S. dollar by the fourth quarter of 2026.
The risk-sensitive Australian dollar last fetched $0.66965, poised for an over 8% surge in the year, its best year since 2020. The New Zealand dollar eased a bit to $0.57875 but was set for a 3.4% rise in the year, snapping a four-year losing streak.
