Country-wide policy
Every Figure in Panamanian Law Is a Dollar Figure
Panamanian statutes and decrees write money in balboas, with the symbol B/. - a tourist must show B/.500, a pensioner needs B/.1,000 a month, the own-means route costs B/.300,000. None of those is a sum you would ever need to convert. Panama has no circulating banknote of its own: its Constitution forbids forced-tender paper money, and what circulates is the United States dollar, with the balboa surviving as coinage and as the unit in which the law is written. The migration regulation makes the equivalence operational without ever stating it: where an applicant's document is in a foreign currency, the regulation requires a conversion into dollars, while every threshold it sets is expressed in balboas.
Topics it changes
- Visiting as a tourist
- Residency on passive income
- Residency as a retiree
- Residency through work
- Residency through investment
- Residency as a student
- Residency through marriage
- Residency through ancestry
- Residency under a regional treaty
- Becoming a citizen
- When you become a tax resident
- Opening a bank account
- Access to healthcare
- Driving and licence exchange
- Bringing your belongings
What it requires
- Read B/. as a dollar sign when reading any Panamanian threshold
- A document in another currency must be accompanied by a conversion into dollars from a competent body
- Panamanian coins circulate alongside United States notes
At a glance
- Currency of the law
- Balboa, written B/.
- Currency in circulation
- United States dollar
- Forced-tender paper money
- Prohibited by the Constitution
- Foreign-currency documents
- Converted into dollars
Why this matters to a reader comparing countries
Most countries in this comparison express their migration thresholds in a currency that moves against the dollar, which is why a threshold in Paraguay or Colombia has to be read together with a date and a rate, and why a figure quoted in dollars by a law firm is usually somebody's arithmetic. Panama is one of three here that do not: Ecuador and El Salvador use the United States dollar itself. Panama's thresholds need no arithmetic at all. B/.1,000 a month for a pensioner is a thousand dollars a month, and it was a thousand dollars a month when the regulation was made in 2008. The flip side is that Panamanian thresholds do not drift with inflation the way a minimum-wage multiple does: they only change when the executive changes them, which the decree-law says it should consider doing every two years.
What the law says
«No habrá en la República papel moneda de curso forzoso.»Our translation - not official
There shall be no forced-tender paper money in the Republic.
One sentence, and it is the constitutional root of Panama's dollarisation: the state may mint but it may not force anyone to accept its notes, so United States notes circulate.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Panama's official gazette. An instrument takes effect on publication here and carries its gazette number as part of its identity, which is how the Friendly Nations list, the migration decree-law and every decree amending them are identified.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: It publishes acts as enacted and never republishes the amended text, so it cannot be cited for consolidated law - and on Panama that bites hard: Decreto Ejecutivo 26 de 2009 alone substituted fifty-six articles of the 2008 regulation, and an article number inside an amending decree is an instruction to amend rather than the article of the resulting regulation. Worse, some issues are page images with no text layer: Gaceta 29335 of 2021 extracts only its contents page, which is why the current Friendly Nations property threshold cannot be stated. Anything quoted from a gazette must be checked for recognition damage first and declared as ocr where it is a reading of a picture.
We re-read it every 30 days. More about this source
«La facultad de emitir moneda pertenece al Estado, el cual podrá transferirla a bancos oficiales de emisión, en la forma que determine la Ley.»Our translation - not official
The power to issue currency belongs to the State, which may transfer it to official banks of issue in the manner the Law determines.
About this source
Panama's official gazette. An instrument takes effect on publication here and carries its gazette number as part of its identity, which is how the Friendly Nations list, the migration decree-law and every decree amending them are identified.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: It publishes acts as enacted and never republishes the amended text, so it cannot be cited for consolidated law - and on Panama that bites hard: Decreto Ejecutivo 26 de 2009 alone substituted fifty-six articles of the 2008 regulation, and an article number inside an amending decree is an instruction to amend rather than the article of the resulting regulation. Worse, some issues are page images with no text layer: Gaceta 29335 of 2021 extracts only its contents page, which is why the current Friendly Nations property threshold cannot be stated. Anything quoted from a gazette must be checked for recognition damage first and declared as ocr where it is a reading of a picture.
We re-read it every 30 days. More about this source
«Si hace referencia a moneda extranjera deberá presentar la conversión donde se detalle su equivalente en dólares, emitida por una entidad competente.»Our translation - not official
If it refers to foreign currency, a conversion detailing its equivalent in dollars, issued by a competent body, must be presented.
The migration regulation sets all of its own thresholds in balboas and asks applicants to convert foreign currency into dollars. It treats the two as the same unit without saying so.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The legislature's normative archive. Each PDF carries a header naming the instrument's type, number, year, date, gazette number and publication date, which makes it the most reliable way to date a Panamanian instrument precisely.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: It archives the act as filed and does not record later amendments on the face of the document, so it must not be cited for what an instrument says now: its copy of the 2008 migration regulation still shows B/.2,000 for the retired rentista, a figure superseded in 2009. Its older scans are also recognitions of pictures rather than text - its copy of Ley 52 de 2012 renders the words for one hundred and eighty-three as ciento coberta y tres - so anything pre-2010 should be treated as a scan until shown otherwise.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
Practical notes
We did not read the monetary statute that fixes the balboa's parity with the United States dollar, and nothing here is quoted as establishing a rate. What is quoted is the constitutional prohibition on forced-tender paper money and the migration regulation's own instruction to convert foreign currency into dollars while writing its thresholds in balboas.
Panamanian coinage is minted in balboa denominations and circulates alongside United States coins and notes. That is observation rather than anything we read in an instrument.