Panama Independent Means Visa Approval Volume on Track for All-Time High in 2023

By the end of July, Migración Panamá had approved 941 independent means visas (Jubilados o Pensionados), a 30% increase compared to the same seven months last year.

The results indicate Panama’s independent means visa will reach a new all-time high for the first time in 12 years: If approval volumes maintain their current monthly level, Panama will approve more than 1,600 such visas in 2023.

Investment-based visa approvals, meanwhile, appear to be plateauing now that the backlog of Friendly Nations Visa applications (which account for some 9 in 10 investment-based visas), accumulated up during the course of 2021 and 2022 as this program's price tag went from $5,000 to $200,000.

In aggregate, Panama's various investor visas saw 1,611 approvals during the first seven months of the year, hinting at an annual total likely to land just shy of last year's performance.

Though Panama has operated more than a dozen different investor visas in the last decade, approvals in the last few years have been concentrated chiefly in the Qualified Investor, Self-Solvency Fixed Deposit, Self-Solvency Real Estate Investor, and Call Center Investor categories.

In both the investor and independent means categories, approval rates remain remarkably high, ranging from 95% to 97%.

Panama's preference for immigrants who invest is reflected in the high share such applicants occupy in the overall panoply of immigration to the country: In the last seven years, investor immigrants' share of all approved immigrants has averaged 15%, or about one in seven immigrants.