The banking system’s liquidity surplus stood at AED101.434 billion at the close of 1 October, according to the Central Bank of the UAE’s Daily Liquidity Indicators workbook published on 2 October 2026. That was about AED9.392 billion below the daily stock of AED110.825 billion recorded on 30 September. In the workbook’s definition, liquidity surplus is the aggregate balance held by banks at the central bank minus statutory reserve requirements. It is therefore not the same as cash freely available to banks, household savings, or the amount of credit extended to the economy.

On 1 October, the aggregate balance was AED369.136 billion and reserve requirements were AED267.702 billion. The aggregate balance combines funds in banks’ reserve accounts with amounts placed in the Overnight Deposit Facility and Overnight Murabaha Facility. The central bank says balances in these facilities are remunerated under its policy-rate framework; the Murabaha facility also reflects the cost of the associated commodity transactions. The workbook recorded AED132.168 billion in the overnight deposit facility, AED22.881 billion in the overnight Murabaha facility and AED214.087 billion in reserve accounts. Together, these three components make up the aggregate balance shown in the daily series.

The workbook’s separate monetary-base table put the UAE monetary base at AED795.072 billion on 1 October. The central bank defines the monetary base as issued currency, current-account balances of licensed financial institutions at the central bank, and outstanding securities and financial instruments issued by the central bank. Its component table showed AED184.162 billion in currency issued, AED267.702 billion in reserve requirements, AED101.434 billion in liquidity surplus, AED240.652 billion in outstanding central-bank securities and AED1.122 billion in excess reserves and other balances. These are components of a defined aggregate, not independent new money flows that should be added and interpreted as separate transactions.

The daily observations show how balances can move across days and facilities. The recorded liquidity surplus was AED131.601 billion on 27 September, AED110.825 billion on 30 September and AED101.434 billion on 1 October. That sequence describes a decline over a short interval; by itself it does not establish a persistent contraction, a credit squeeze or financial stress. The table also reported statutory reserve ratios of 14 percent for demand deposits and 1 percent for time deposits on those dates. The reserve-maintenance period was on day nine on 1 October, useful operational context when comparing daily readings.

For 2 October, the workbook provides a forecast rather than an observed result. It uses the previous day’s aggregate balance of AED369.136 billion and reserve requirements of AED267.702 billion, giving an observed starting surplus of AED101.434 billion. The mean forecast for end-of-day liquidity surplus was AED100.952 billion, with a 95 percent confidence interval from AED94.204 billion to AED107.699 billion. These are model estimates for the next day, not a measurement of what actually occurred on 2 October. The source reports a previous-business-day forecast error of AED1.151 billion and explains that a positive error means the forecast was higher than the realized figure.

The workbook also lists constant-maturity M-Bill yields for 1 October: 4.151 percent for one month, 4.387 percent for three months and 4.583 percent for six months. The central bank’s method note says these estimates are derived from the lowest bid yields quoted by primary dealers at noon on each trading day for the most recently auctioned M-Bills. A forward monotone-convex spline is used to estimate yields at constant maturities from observed tenors. These figures should not be mistaken for the directly observed yield of a security with precisely each stated remaining term. They provide a market-pricing indicator alongside the daily balance-sheet data.

The workbook explicitly warns that liquidity and monetary-base data in its tables are preliminary and may differ from values published in other reports. The secondary-market M-Bills volume section has a different time basis: it reports monthly flows, with total September volume of AED18.729 billion, rather than daily balances. Those measures should not be treated as if they were observations of the same kind or frequency. The report is designed to show banking-system liquidity, central-bank operations and selected market indicators. It does not, on its own, measure bank profitability, credit quality, financing conditions across the real economy or household saving behaviour.

The most defensible interpretation is therefore a dated snapshot of banks’ balance buffer above their reserve requirements at the central bank, together with its day-to-day movement. The fall between 30 September and 1 October is directly visible in the table. Explaining why it happened requires examining the daily contribution of central-bank operations, government and other accounts, net foreign assets and currency issued, which the workbook groups under autonomous factors and monetary operations. A single observation cannot establish cause. The 2 October forecast should also remain clearly labelled as a forecast. Comparing it with later realized values would provide a more appropriate basis for judging how well the estimate was calibrated.

This distinction between a stock, a flow and a forecast matters for anyone reading the release. The daily surplus is a stock at a point in time; changes in aggregate balances and monetary operations are flows over the day; and the next-day range is a model output with stated uncertainty. The central bank publishes all three in one workbook, but their proximity does not make them interchangeable. The 95 percent interval is not a guarantee that the eventual observation must fall inside it, and the source does not publish enough here to infer the model’s full specification. Readers can use the values to track near-term liquidity conditions while avoiding claims about broader credit availability or the health of individual banks without separate evidence.