Panama Investor Visa — Qualified Investor

Three investment doors, and where each figure stands must be said before reading on. The three sums below are as published by the Ministry of Commerce and Industries on the programme page.

The article-by-article detail is read from Executive Decree 193, and this should be stated plainly: that instrument could not be checked again in full text against the Official Gazette, because the official gazette file for issue 30140-B carries only the contents page and contains no article of the decree.

Executive Decree 193 of 15 October 2024, published in Official Gazette 30140-B, amends all three threshold provisions of Decree 722.

The real-estate door: Article 1 rewrites Article 2 of Decree 722 so that the applicant must make in Panama an investment of at least three hundred thousand balboas, the money coming from a foreign source, held personally or through a legal person of which the applicant is always the final beneficiary.

Article 2 splits this door into two branches.

The first is buying property outright from 300,000 balboas, with the property free of encumbrances. Where the applicant has paid the liquid sum of 300,000 on a property worth more, the remainder may be financed by a mortgage with a local bank.

The second is buying through a promise-of-sale contract, also from 300,000 balboas, paid through a trust administered by a licensed bank or trust company, or paid directly to the developer for the full value of a property not yet built or not yet segregated.

In that case the developer must post a bank guarantee covering at least the whole value of the investment. The guarantee is kept in force until the property is built and registered in the investor's name, and is renewed and filed annually with the Ministry of Commerce and Industries.

The securities door: at least five hundred thousand balboas in securities of issuers whose business operates within Panamanian territory.

The investment is executed through a brokerage licensed by the Superintendency of the Securities Market and through the Panama Stock Exchange, with the commitment maintained for at least five years from the moment the investment is perfected.

The deposit door: at least seven hundred and fifty thousand balboas in a fixed-term deposit at a general-licence bank, for a minimum term of five years, the deposit free of encumbrances and the bank certifying that the funds come from a foreign source.

One point must be stated plainly because it was the very place where two state pages contradicted each other: Article 4 of Decree 193 rewrites Article 10 of Decree 722 in full — the transitional provision that had set a forty-eight-month term for the reduced figure of 300,000.

The new Article 10 contains no term at all; it merely allows those with applications under the own-economic-solvency route through real estate since 2020 to switch into this subcategory. The 300,000-balboa figure is therefore no longer a temporary one.

The outcome is permanent residence granted directly, without passing through an intermediate temporary category, within the subcategory of Permanent Resident as a Qualified Investor under the class of Permanent Resident for Economic Reasons.

The subcategory was created by Executive Decree 722 of 15 October 2020 and has been amended twice: by Decree 109 of 13 October 2022, Official Gazette 29643-A, and by Decree 193 of 15 October 2024, Official Gazette 30140-B.

The Ministry of Commerce and Industries, which holds the programme, states three things about that status on its live programme page:

Permanent residence is obtained directly without a prior temporary residence; the application may be started from abroad through an attorney even before the investor enters the country; and the benefit extends to a spouse, children and parents who qualify.

The status is not unconditional once granted: the holder must maintain the investment for five years, file documentation annually showing it remains in force, and visit Panama at least once every two years.

The Ministry of Commerce and Industries states approximately thirty business days for a decision, and the word approximately is the ministry's own rather than this table's: the programme page reads that resolution is approximately thirty business days under the established procedure.

This is the agency's commitment on handling speed, not a statutory deadline an applicant could invoke once it passes.

Two procedural features explain why the figure is short by regional standards: the file passes through a special single window of the National Immigration Service, and it may be started from abroad through an attorney before the investor enters the country, so the waiting period does not include travel.

Three other periods attach to this route, none of them at the adjudication stage and all of them far longer: maintaining the investment for five years, filing documentation annually, and visiting Panama at least once every two years.

This route grants permanent residence directly rather than through a temporary category, but that permanence is not unconditional, and the live programme page of the Ministry of Commerce and Industries prints two obligations one under the other.

The first is to maintain the investment for five years and file annually the documentation showing the investment is still in force — this is not a one-off outlay but a recurring reporting duty.

The second is a presence obligation, lighter than most comparable routes but a real threshold nonetheless: the holder must visit Panama at least once every two years to keep permanent residence. Anyone reading that this route demands no presence has read too little.

On where to file, two apparently opposed features in fact fit together: the application may be started through an attorney even before the investor enters the country, that is, filed from abroad through a lawyer in Panama and completed once the applicant is on Panamanian soil.

Two procedural commitments are worth recording because they are commitments rather than advertising: a decision in approximately thirty business days under the established procedure, and handling through a special single window of the National Immigration Service. The benefit extends to the spouse, children and parents who qualify.

The decree that creates this category could not be read, so the answer has to be taken from the general dependant rule for Panamanian residents, and this join must be stated openly.

Article 224 of Executive Decree 320 of 8 August 2008, as amended by Executive Decree 26 of 2 March 2009, allows this permit to be sought for the spouse, children under eighteen, relatives with a disability, and dependent parents of a two-year provisional resident, a permanent resident or a national.

Children aged eighteen to twenty-five may be applied for as dependants provided they study regularly and are economically dependent; and a resident or national who shows guardianship or custody of a minor may apply for that child.

An additional per-head financial threshold does exist and is given in figures: minimum income of one thousand balboas a month plus a further one hundred balboas for each dependant, substitutable by an employment letter with pay slips and social security records, or by a bank reference letter.

Each dependant also files a certified cheque of 250 balboas to the National Treasury and 800 balboas to the National Migration Service, together with a notarised letter of responsibility and repatriation signed by the sponsor, and evidence of the family tie.

For children aged eighteen to twenty-five, a certificate of full-time study and a sworn declaration of single status are added.

The limit of this record: Executive Decree 722 of 15 October 2020, the instrument creating the Qualified Investor category itself, is an image scan from which almost no text can be extracted, so the possibility that it sets its own rule differing from the general one above is not ruled out.

The status this programme grants, whether a visa or a residence permit, does not replace the holder's passport. The holder still travels on the passport of their own country, so the figure below belongs to the Panama passport and becomes the holder's only once they are issued a Panama passport.

According to the Passport Index of Prosperous Intelligence, on data dated 30 September 2026, the Panama passport reaches 157 destinations without applying for a consular visa in advance. The figure combines three forms of entry and does not count an e-Visa that must be obtained beforehand:

It is therefore a measure of how easily the holder travels, not a count of visa-free countries in the narrow sense.

For comparison, on the same source and the same method of counting, the Vietnamese passport reaches 44 destinations. The two lists of destinations do not nest inside one another, so the difference is an indication rather than a list of places newly opened.

Prosperous Intelligence dates its data and advises checking with the destination’s official authorities before travelling.

The only readable first-tier source is the programme page of the state investment promotion authority, and that page says nothing whatever about the investor tax position.

The stated basis is Executive Decree No. 722 of 15 October 2020 amending Law No. 3 of 22 February 2008, with three investment routes:

Real estate at a minimum of USD 300,000, securities through a licensed brokerage at a minimum of USD 500,000, and a fixed-term deposit; the capital must originate abroad and the investment must be held for at least five years.

Where the page does use the word impuesto, the text does not belong to this category:

They sit under the fixed-term deposit heading but the text concerns exemption from tax and import duty on operating materials and exemption from income tax on the developer rental and sub-rental income, which is text from a different regime sitting exactly where the deposit threshold ought to be.

Two limits belong in the record.

First, the texts of Decree 722 and of Decree 197 of 2021 as published by the National Immigration Service are both image scans yielding no meaningful text. So the possibility that the decree contains a tax provision is not ruled out, and this record makes no guess.

Second, the immigration service publishes no document checklist for this category, while publishing more than sixty for others.

Nothing here may be carried over from the neighbouring solvencia económica propia category, which does require an income tax clearance under article 195 of Decree 320 of 2008; that is a different route.

Four payments, and all four are due with the application rather than after approval.

Article 4 of Executive Decree 722 of 15 October 2020, published in Digital Official Gazette 29136 of 16 October 2020, requires an applicant for permanent residence in the Qualified Investor subcategory to file two equal sums:

Five thousand balboas to the National Treasury as migration procedure fees, and a further five thousand balboas to the National Migration Service as a repatriation deposit.

Each accompanying dependant adds one thousand balboas to the Treasury and one thousand balboas to the Migration Service, under the same two headings and also filed with the application.

These four figures were read in two independent places and agree: in the decree itself, and in the requirements sheet issued by the Ministry of Commerce and Industries.

Checking both was necessary rather than redundant, because that same ministry's own page introducing Decree 722 still carries a threshold that has since lapsed — so a ministry figure is only trustworthy once matched against the instrument.

One limit of this reading has to be stated rather than filled in by inference: the decree calls the second sum a repatriation deposit, but does not say when, or whether, it is returned.

Beyond those four sums, the requirements sheet lists documents that carry costs of their own and are easily left out of a budget:

A notarised power of attorney, three passport photographs, a copy of the passport certified by a notary or the competent authority, a criminal record certificate, a health certificate, and a sworn declaration of personal antecedents.

A file including dependants adds a notarised letter of responsibility together with relationship certificates that must be authenticated and translated; and children aged eighteen to under twenty-five must further produce a certificate of full-time enrolment and a sworn declaration of single status made before a Panamanian notary.

Decree 193 of 2024, read across all five of its pages, adds no charge at all, so the schedule above is the one in force at the verification date.