Pakistan’s poverty rate hits 28.9% in 2025, with 70 million people below the poverty line. Explore the causes of poverty in Pakistan 2026, economic stagnation, inequality trends, and the policy rethink the country desperately needs.

Imagine a wheat farmer in rural Punjab — call him Aslam — who has tilled the same two acres his father left him for thirty years. In 2022, catastrophic floods submerged his fields for six weeks. In 2023, erratic monsoons halved his harvest. By 2024, the government’s support price for wheat had been slashed under IMF conditionality, and the middlemen who once paid a modest premium had moved on. Aslam’s real income today, inflation-adjusted, is lower than it was a decade ago. He is not alone. He is, statistically speaking, one of 70 million Pakistanis.

Pakistan’s economic stagnation is no longer a forecast. It is a lived reality — etched into household budgets, migration patterns, and the quiet despair of a shrinking middle class. The country’s latest Household Integrated Economic Survey (HIES 2024–25), released by the Planning Commission, confirms what many economists had long warned: the poverty rate has surged to 28.9%, the highest level since 2014, up sharply from 21.9% in 2018–19. For a nation of 240 million, that translates to roughly 70 million people subsisting on less than Rs8,484 per month — approximately $30.

The macroeconomic headline numbers tell a different story, of course. Inflation has cooled from its 38% peak. The current account has stabilised. The IMF programme is on track. Foreign exchange reserves have recovered. Islamabad calls this “stabilisation.” But stabilisation, it turns out, is not the same as development. And the gap between the two — in human terms — is widening by the year.

Pakistan Poverty Rate 2025: A Decade of Lost Ground

The Planning Commission data is unambiguous and, frankly, damning. Real household income — adjusted for inflation — in 2024–25 is 13% lower than it was in 2015–16. Real consumption has fallen 8% over the same period. These are not rounding errors. They represent a structural deterioration of living standards across an entire generation.

Key Economic and Poverty Indicators: Pakistan 2015–2025

Sources: Pakistan Planning Commission HIES 2024–25; World Bank Pakistan Overview; IMF Article IV Consultation 2024

Income inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, has risen to 31.7 nationally — up from 28.4 in 2018–19. Rural inequality has jumped from 25.1 to 29.2, while urban inequality sits at 34.4. The countryside, long assumed to be Pakistan’s economic cushion, is fraying fastest. Rural poverty now stands at 36.2%, up from 28.2% just six years ago.

The UNDP Human Development Report 2023–24 places Pakistan’s HDI at 0.540, ranking it 164th out of 193 countries, with a 33% decline when adjusted for inequality — one of the steeper inequality-adjusted drops in South Asia. This is not a country on the cusp of emerging market status. It is a country sliding in the wrong direction.

Causes of Poverty in Pakistan 2026: Climate, Policy, and the Urban-Rural Divide

The Climate Shock No One Planned For

Aslam’s story is not idiosyncratic. Climate change has become a structural driver of rural poverty in Pakistan. The 2022 floods submerged one-third of the country, destroying crops, livestock, and infrastructure worth an estimated $30 billion, according to World Bank damage assessments. The recovery was incomplete before the next climate shock arrived.

Small farmers, who constitute the backbone of Pakistan’s agricultural sector, are disproportionately exposed. They lack irrigation alternatives when rains fail, insurance when floods arrive, and credit to replant after losses. The government’s response — oscillating support prices for wheat and sugarcane, and import/export restrictions that shift with fiscal pressures — has amplified rather than cushioned these shocks. When the wheat support price was cut in 2023–24 under IMF programme conditionality, it was economically defensible. But for farmers already operating at subsistence margins, it was catastrophic.

As the Guardian’s climate desk has documented, Pakistan contributes less than 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions yet ranks among the top ten countries most vulnerable to climate impacts. The moral asymmetry is real; the policy response has been inadequate.

The Urban Worker Squeezed from Both Sides

Three hundred kilometres east of Aslam’s flooded fields, a garment worker named Nadia stitches denim in a Lahore factory. Her nominal wage has risen — just not nearly as fast as prices. Urban inflation, which exceeded 40% at its 2023 peak before retreating, eroded purchasing power faster than any wage negotiation could track.

Urban Pakistan’s manufacturing base, meanwhile, has contracted. The Large Scale Manufacturing (LSM) index stands at 115 in 2024–25, down from a peak of 128 in 2021–22. Food processing and textiles — sectors that employ millions at the lower end of the income spectrum — have struggled under high energy costs, import restrictions on raw materials (introduced during the 2022–23 foreign exchange crisis), and weak domestic demand. Some sectors have rebounded: automobile sales have recovered, and apparel exports hit record highs in 2024, buoyed by global supply chain diversification away from Bangladesh. But these gains are concentrated in capital-intensive niches that create fewer jobs per unit of output.

Urban unemployment, at 7.1%, understates underemployment — the millions working part-time, informally, or below their skill level. Pakistan’s youth bulge intensifies the pressure: roughly 60% of the population is under 30, and an economy growing at 2–3% annually cannot absorb the 1.5–2 million new labour market entrants each year.

Pakistan Economic Stagnation: A Lost Decade Compared

The contrast with the early 2000s is instructive — and painful. Between 2002 and 2007, Pakistan grew at an average of 7% annually. Poverty fell sharply. A nascent middle class emerged in urban Punjab and Sindh. Consumer goods companies expanded distribution networks into secondary cities. That growth story attracted foreign direct investment, spurred telecom expansion, and created something rare in Pakistan’s economic history: optimism.

What happened? Partly geopolitics — the war economy distortions of the post-9/11 decade. Partly structural: the early 2000s growth was partly debt-financed and built on shallow foundations. The textile and agriculture sectors never underwent the productivity transformation that, say, Bangladesh’s garment industry did through sustained investment and export discipline.

The Bangladesh and India Comparison

The regional comparison is sobering. Bangladesh, starting from a lower base, has sustained export-led manufacturing growth, reduced its poverty rate to below 19%, and achieved per capita income convergence with Pakistan. It did so through a narrow but disciplined focus: the garment sector, remittances, and microfinance penetration at scale. The IMF’s South Asia Regional Economic Outlook credits Bangladesh’s export institutional framework — stable energy supply, reliable port infrastructure, workers’ rights minimum floors — as critical differentiators.

India, despite its own inequality challenges documented by the World Inequality Lab, has managed 6–7% growth rates that structurally reduce extreme poverty even if inequality rises. The key difference is productive investment: India’s gross fixed capital formation runs at approximately 30% of GDP. Pakistan’s hovers around 13–15% — insufficient to generate the employment density a young population requires.

Pakistan’s FDI inflows have been chronically low — under $2 billion in most recent years — and several multinational firms (in consumer goods, pharmaceuticals, and energy) have scaled back or exited entirely, citing regulatory uncertainty, energy costs, and currency risk. The Financial Times has tracked this multinational exodus as symptomatic of a broader investment climate problem that stabilisation packages alone cannot fix.

Impact of Inequality on Pakistan Growth: A Vicious Cycle

Rising inequality is not merely a moral concern — it is an economic drag. When the Gini coefficient rises and the middle class contracts, domestic consumption loses its dynamism. Pakistan’s consumer market, once a compelling growth story for multinationals, becomes less attractive. Tax revenues from a narrowing formal economy remain inadequate. Public investment in health, education, and infrastructure — the long-run foundations of productivity — is crowded out by debt servicing, which now consumes nearly 50% of federal revenue.

The World Bank’s “Fragile Gains” assessment notes that while macroeconomic stabilisation has reduced tail risks, it has not addressed the structural drivers of low growth and high vulnerability. A country where real household incomes are 13% below their 2015–16 levels is not stabilising around a healthy equilibrium. It is stabilising around a poverty trap.

Poverty Alleviation Strategies for Pakistan: What Would Actually Work

The policy menu is not mysterious. Economists from Islamabad to Washington have outlined the broad contours for years. What has been missing is political will, sequencing, and a coherent growth vision that complements — rather than defers to — stabilisation.

1. Debt Restructuring and Fiscal Space Creation Pakistan’s external debt obligations leave almost no room for productive public investment. A credible medium-term debt restructuring — ideally coordinated with bilateral creditors (China, Saudi Arabia, UAE) and multilaterals — could free fiscal space for the infrastructure and human capital investment that growth requires. The early 2000s precedent is instructive: the Paris Club rescheduling of 2001 gave Pakistan’s government the breathing room to invest, and growth followed.

2. Tax Base Broadening — Genuinely Pakistan’s tax-to-GDP ratio, at approximately 10–11%, is among the lowest in the region. Agricultural income — concentrated among large landowners — is largely untaxed. Real estate capital gains escape formal taxation. The retail and wholesale trade sector, dominated by politically connected interests, contributes minimally to the exchequer. Broadening the tax base is not technically difficult. It is politically difficult. The IMF has repeatedly flagged these exemptions; the government has repeatedly deferred action.

3. A Jobs-Centred Industrial Policy Pakistan needs a Bangladesh-style sectoral focus — probably in textiles and apparel (where it has comparative advantage and recent export momentum), agro-processing (where raw material inputs are domestic), and digital services (where the youth bulge becomes an asset). This requires stable energy supply at competitive prices, predictable trade policy, and investment in technical and vocational education aligned to employer needs.

4. Climate-Resilient Agriculture Small farmers need crop insurance, drought-resistant seed varieties, water-efficient irrigation, and access to credit at non-usurious rates. These are not novel ideas — they are standard development economics. The challenge is delivery through institutions that have historically served large landowners rather than smallholders.

5. Restoring Private Sector Confidence State-owned enterprises continue to crowd out private investment, drain fiscal resources, and distort markets. A credible privatisation programme — with transparent processes and regulatory frameworks that protect consumers — would signal seriousness to both domestic and foreign investors.

Conclusion: Stabilisation Is Not Enough

Pakistan in 2026 stands at a genuine crossroads. The IMF programme has averted the acute crisis that loomed in 2022–23. Inflation is retreating. Reserves are recovering. These are real achievements, and dismissing them is unfair.

But stabilisation around stagnation is not a development strategy. Seventy million people below the poverty line is not a rounding error on the path to recovery — it is a structural failure demanding structural response. The shrinking middle class, the youth unemployment crisis, the rural poverty surge, the climate vulnerability of smallholder agriculture: these are interconnected problems that no single IMF tranche will resolve.

The early 2000s showed that Pakistan can grow — and when it grows inclusively, poverty falls. The ingredients are known. What is required is the political economy to assemble them: debt relief to create fiscal space, tax reform to fund public investment, industrial policy to generate jobs, and climate adaptation to protect the rural poor.

Aslam cannot wait another decade for the theory to become practice. Neither can the 70 million Pakistanis who share his predicament.

As a Supreme Court ruling strips Washington of its most powerful tariff weapon, Beijing signals strategic patience ahead of a high-stakes presidential summit — and the world’s markets are watching.

China vows to decide on US tariff countermeasures “in due course” while welcoming the sixth round of US-China trade consultations. Here’s what the Supreme Court ruling, Trump’s China visit, and Beijing’s record trade surplus mean for global markets in 2026.

There is an old Chinese proverb that patience is power. In the escalating theater of US-China trade tensions, Beijing appears to have taken that maxim as official policy. On Tuesday, China’s Ministry of Commerce signaled it would respond to President Donald Trump’s newly announced 15% blanket tariff on all US imports — not with an immediate salvo, but with carefully calibrated restraint, pledging to decide on countermeasures “in due course.” That phrase, deceptively simple, conceals a sophisticated geopolitical calculation made infinitely more complex by a landmark US Supreme Court ruling that has fundamentally altered the architecture of the trade war.

Welcome to the newest chapter of US-China trade talks 2026 — and it may be the most consequential one yet.

The Supreme Court Ruling That Changed Everything

To understand Beijing’s composure, you first have to understand what happened in Washington last Friday. The US Supreme Court struck down tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the legal scaffolding Trump had used to levy sweeping duties on Chinese goods. Those tariffs had subjected Chinese imports to an additional 20% charge. With that authority now invalidated, Trump announced a substitute measure: a 15% temporary tariff on imports from all countries, a blunter instrument that legal scholars and trade analysts immediately flagged as constitutionally fragile.

For Beijing, the ruling was not merely a legal technicality — it was a strategic windfall. As the Council on Foreign Relations has noted, the Supreme Court’s decision meaningfully constrains the executive branch’s ability to deploy emergency tariff authority unilaterally, weakening the credibility of future tariff threats and handing China’s trade negotiators a structural advantage at the bargaining table. The impact of the Supreme Court ruling on US-China tariffs in 2026 cannot be overstated: Washington’s tariff weapon has been legally blunted, and Beijing knows it.

China’s commerce ministry official was measured but unmistakably pointed in response. “China has consistently opposed all forms of unilateral tariff measures,” the official said Tuesday, “and urges the US side to cancel unilateral tariffs and refrain from further imposing such tariffs.” Translation: China is not going to blink — and it no longer has to.

China’s Negotiating Position: Stronger Than the Headlines Suggest

Analysts assessing China’s response to new US tariffs in the post-IEEPA era should resist the temptation to read Beijing’s patience as weakness. The data tells a different story.

Despite the full weight of US tariff pressure across 2025, China’s economy grew at 5% in 2025, meeting its official target and confounding forecasters who predicted a more severe slowdown. Yes, US imports from China fell sharply — by approximately 29% over the year — but Chinese exporters demonstrated remarkable adaptability, pivoting aggressively toward Southeast Asia, Japan, and India. The result: a record trade surplus of roughly $1 trillion in the first eleven months of 2025, according to Chinese customs data. That figure is not just an economic statistic; it is a geopolitical statement.

Global supply chain shifts from the US-China trade war have, paradoxically, expanded China’s trade network rather than isolated it. Vietnamese factories now process Chinese intermediate goods before export to the United States. Indian manufacturers source Chinese components at scale. The diversification that Washington hoped would weaken Beijing has instead made Chinese trade flows more resilient and more globally embedded.

Key data points underpinning China’s leverage:

• GDP growth of 5% in 2025 despite sustained US tariff pressure
• US imports from China down 29%, but export diversification to Asia offsets losses
• Record $1 trillion trade surplus in the first 11 months of 2025
• Supreme Court ruling invalidating IEEPA tariffs, limiting Trump’s unilateral authority
• Sixth round of US-China economic and trade consultations on the near-term horizon

The Sixth Round: “Frank Consultations” in a Charged Atmosphere

The commerce ministry’s announcement that China is willing to hold frank consultations during the upcoming sixth round of US-China economic and trade talks is diplomatically significant. In the lexicon of Chinese official communication, “frank” is a carefully chosen word. It signals both seriousness of purpose and a willingness to engage on difficult issues — without promising concessions.

What should the sixth round US-China trade consultations analysis account for? First, the structural asymmetry created by the Supreme Court ruling means the US arrives at the table with reduced coercive leverage. Second, China’s domestic economic performance insulates Beijing from the urgency that might otherwise force hasty compromise. Third, the approaching Trump-Xi summit creates a diplomatic deadline that cuts both ways: both sides have incentives to show progress, but neither wants to appear to have capitulated.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Beijing views the court ruling as an opening — a chance to reframe negotiations on more equitable terms rather than under the shadow of maximalist tariff threats. That reframing will likely define the sixth round’s tone.

Trump’s China Visit: Summit Diplomacy Under a New Tariff Reality

Perhaps the most dramatic element of this unfolding story is the announcement that President Trump is scheduled to visit China from March 31 to April 2 for direct talks with President Xi Jinping. The economic implications of the Trump-Xi summit in April 2026 are substantial, and they extend well beyond bilateral trade.

Markets have already taken note — and not optimistically. US stocks stumbled following Trump’s 15% tariff announcement, with investors recalibrating expectations for a near-term trade resolution. The prospect of a presidential summit offers hope for de-escalation, but the diplomatic road between now and April is strewn with obstacles.

Taiwan remains a structural irritant in any trade discussion. Beijing has consistently insisted that its “one China” position is non-negotiable, and any US moves on Taiwan arms sales or official contacts risk derailing economic negotiations entirely. Meanwhile, Trump’s domestic political constituency demands visible toughness on China — a constraint that limits his negotiating flexibility even as the courts limit his tariff authority.

As CNBC has observed, China’s leverage before this high-stakes summit has materially increased since the Supreme Court’s ruling. The question is whether Trump can construct a face-saving framework that satisfies his base while offering Beijing enough substantive concessions to justify Xi Jinping’s engagement.

What Does China’s Stance Mean for Global Markets?

For investors and policymakers monitoring the situation, China’s “in due course” posture on countermeasures to US tariffs carries a specific signal: Beijing is in no hurry to escalate, because it doesn’t need to. The current trajectory favors strategic patience.

But patience has limits. If the 15% blanket tariff survives legal challenge and takes full effect, China’s commerce ministry has both the rhetorical justification and economic capacity to respond — whether through targeted duties on US agricultural exports, restrictions on rare earth materials critical to American technology supply chains, or regulatory pressure on US companies operating in China.

The global implications are equally consequential. The WTO’s dispute resolution mechanisms, already strained by years of US unilateralism, face further stress as both sides maneuver outside established multilateral frameworks. Emerging economies caught between Washington and Beijing — particularly in Southeast Asia — face mounting pressure to choose sides in a bifurcating trade architecture.

China’s trade surplus amid US tariffs in 2026 also raises uncomfortable questions for the European Union and other trading partners. A flood of Chinese goods diverted from the US market is already generating trade friction in Europe and Asia, creating pressure for their own defensive measures and complicating the global supply chain shifts from the US-China trade war.

Looking Ahead: Three Scenarios for the Summit

Scenario One: Managed De-escalation. The sixth round of talks produces a face-saving framework — a pause on new tariffs, renewed market access commitments from Beijing, and a summit declaration emphasizing “strategic communication.” Markets rally, tensions simmer but stabilize. Probability: moderate, contingent on domestic political constraints on both sides.

Scenario Two: Symbolic Summit, Structural Stalemate. Trump and Xi meet, photos are taken, statements are issued. But the fundamental disagreements over technology decoupling, Taiwan, and trade imbalances remain unresolved. The 15% tariff stays. China holds its countermeasures in reserve. The trade war continues by other means. Probability: high, reflecting the structural depth of the conflict.

Scenario Three: Escalatory Breakdown. Legal challenges to the 15% tariff succeed, Trump seeks new legislative authority, and China responds to a hardened US position with targeted countermeasures on agriculture and rare earths. The summit is postponed or canceled. Global markets reprice risk sharply downward. Probability: lower but non-trivial, especially if Taiwan developments intervene.

The Bottom Line

The phrase “in due course” may sound like bureaucratic evasion, but in the context of US-China trade talks in 2026, it represents a sophisticated strategic posture. China is not reacting — it is calibrating. The Supreme Court’s ruling has handed Beijing a structural advantage at precisely the moment a presidential summit demands careful choreography. China’s economic resilience, its record trade surplus, and its expanding export network have all strengthened its hand.

As the New York Times has noted, Trump arrives at this summit with both an opportunity and a liability: the chance for a landmark diplomatic achievement, burdened by reduced legal leverage and an electorate expecting visible wins. For Xi Jinping, the calculus is simpler — wait, negotiate with clarity, and let Washington’s internal contradictions do some of the work.

In a trade war that has reshaped global supply chains and tested the limits of economic statecraft, Beijing’s patience may prove to be its most effective weapon of all.

The global banking environment, still navigating the aftershocks of US-China trade tensions, elevated interest rates, and a battered commercial real estate sector, United Overseas Bank’s Q4 2025 earnings briefing offered something increasingly rare: measured reassurance. The Singapore lender’s leadership told analysts and investors on Monday that provisions set aside for its most closely watched exposures—Greater China and US commercial real estate—remain more than sufficient, even as the broader sector braces for a prolonged period of uncertainty.

For investors who have spent the better part of two years watching regional bank balance sheets with a mix of hope and dread, that message carries real weight.

Slowing Bad-Debt Formation: A Quiet but Meaningful Shift

Perhaps the most encouraging signal from UOB’s Q4 briefing was the deceleration in new non-performing asset (NPA) formation. The bank recorded S$599 million in new NPA formation in Q4 2025, a meaningful improvement from the S$838 million logged in Q3. That’s a quarter-on-quarter decline of roughly 29%—not a dramatic reversal, but in the language of credit risk, a deceleration of that magnitude deserves attention.

To put it plainly: bad debts are still forming, but they’re forming more slowly. In credit cycle terms, this is often the first sign that the worst may be passing.

Group CFO Leong Yung Chee, speaking at the briefing alongside Deputy Chairman and CEO Wee Ee Cheong, characterised pre-emptive provisions for commercial real estate “hot spots” in Greater China and the United States as adequate buffers against potential future bad debts. That language—pre-emptive—is telling. UOB did not wait for losses to crystallise before building reserves. It anticipated stress and prepared for it. As Bloomberg has reported, Singapore banks have faced persistent scrutiny over their Hong Kong and China property loan exposures, making this kind of forward provisioning strategically critical.

Adequate Buffers for High-Risk Exposures

The headlines around UOB’s Greater China and US portfolios have not always been comfortable reading. But the numbers presented Monday suggest the bank has managed these concentrations with discipline.

On US commercial real estate, the CFO confirmed that problematic loans account for approximately 1% of UOB’s local US portfolio—a figure that, in the context of what has unfolded in American office and retail property markets since 2022, is remarkably contained. For context, several mid-tier US regional banks have seen CRE stress levels multiples higher, contributing to a string of failures and near-misses that Reuters has documented extensively.

For Greater China, the bank’s pre-emptive provisioning strategy has been running since the early tremors in China’s property sector became impossible to ignore. With Chinese developer defaults and Hong Kong office vacancies still elevated, UOB’s conservative stance now looks prescient rather than overcautious.

Key Metrics at a Glance:

The halving of allowances for credit and other losses—from S$227 million a year earlier to S$113 million in Q4 2025—reflects lower specific allowances, a signal that the bank is not being forced into emergency provisioning on newly distressed assets. That’s a meaningful distinction.

Stable NPL Ratio and an Unchanged Credit Outlook

UOB’s non-performing loan (NPL) ratio held steady at 1.5% in Q4, unchanged from the prior quarter. Stability here is underrated. In an environment where several global banks have seen NPL ratios creep upward under the combined weight of higher-for-longer interest rates and slowing trade volumes, a flat 1.5% is a credible result.

The bank also maintained its credit cost guidance at 25 to 30 basis points for the period ahead—a range that signals neither complacency nor alarm. It reflects an institution that has stress-tested its books honestly and arrived at a considered, defensible estimate of forward losses.

How UOB Compares to Its Singapore Peers

UOB does not operate in a vacuum. Singapore’s banking sector—anchored by the “Big Three” of DBS, OCBC, and UOB—is among the most closely watched in Asia, and cross-peer comparison matters to both investors and regulators.

DBS Group, Singapore’s largest bank, reported a 10% drop in Q4 net profit, weighed down by rising allowances and fee income headwinds. That result rattled some investors, though DBS management attributed a portion of the provision build to proactive risk management rather than asset deterioration. OCBC, meanwhile, has been expected to report relatively stable net interest margins (NIMs) as its asset-liability mix has benefited from the elevated rate environment—though NIM compression risk remains live as global central banks edge toward easing cycles.

Against this backdrop, UOB’s Q4 print reads as the more cautiously optimistic of the three. It has neither DBS’s sharp profit dip nor the NIM sensitivity questions surrounding OCBC. What it does have is a provisioning track record that appears, at least for now, to have gotten ahead of the curve.

Broader Economic Implications for ASEAN Banking

The UOB briefing is not just a story about one bank. It is a data point in a much larger narrative about how ASEAN’s financial institutions are navigating a world reshaped by US-China strategic competition, deglobalization pressures, and the slow unwinding of the post-pandemic rate cycle.

The Financial Times and The Economist have both noted that Southeast Asian banks occupy a peculiar geopolitical sweet spot—exposed to both the Chinese economic sphere and the dollar-denominated global financial system, and therefore vulnerable to friction in both directions. UOB, with its pan-ASEAN franchise spanning Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam, is particularly exposed to trade flow disruptions. If US tariffs on Chinese goods accelerate supply chain reshuffling into Southeast Asia, UOB could benefit from the financing boom that tends to accompany such relocations. If, however, the tariff regime suppresses regional growth broadly, credit quality across its ASEAN book faces pressure.

The credit cost guidance range of 25 to 30 basis points implicitly acknowledges this dual-sided risk. It is conservative enough to absorb a modest deterioration in the macro environment, but not so elevated as to suggest the bank sees a crisis on the horizon.

Conclusion: Resilience Maintained, Vigilance Required

UOB’s Q4 2025 earnings briefing delivered what its leadership likely hoped for: a credible narrative of stability without complacency. The slowdown in NPA formation, the adequacy of Greater China and US CRE buffers, the unchanged NPL ratio, and the maintained credit cost guidance all tell a story of an institution that managed its risks carefully through a turbulent year.

But the story is not finished. US commercial real estate faces structural challenges that are unlikely to be resolved within a single business cycle. Greater China’s property sector remains in a drawn-out adjustment. And the geopolitical environment—US-China trade friction, rate uncertainty, ASEAN growth volatility—continues to generate tail risks that no provision buffer can fully insulate against.

What Monday’s briefing demonstrated is that UOB entered 2026 with its balance sheet integrity intact and its risk management credibility undamaged. For the Singapore banking sector resilience in Q4 2025, that may be the most important headline of all.