Moving to Panama: Pets, Furniture and Your Licence

A move to Panama comes down to four errands, and each one belongs to a different authority. Your pets clear MIDA and MINSA at the airport. Your furniture clears customs. Your driving licence comes from the ATTT. Your bank account comes from whichever bank you choose. Each publishes its own fee sheet, none of the sheets mentions the others, so this guide puts all four in one place with the figure and the document each authority actually asks for. Residency is a fifth project with its own thresholds, and the residency guide covers that one.

Two of the four have timing built into them. If you are bringing an animal, the Ministry of Health can ask you to keep it inside your own property for forty days, which turns your first housing decision into a fixed one. And the driving licence is a post-residency errand, because the ATTT wants your migration card. Both are easy to plan around once you know they are coming.

Key takeaways

• Government fees for one dog are B/.65, all in cash. MIDA charges B/.10 for the import licence and B/.15 per animal for inspection; MINSA charges B/.40 per animal. Joint MIDA/MINSA requirements sheet for Tocumen, updated March 2026.
• Where strict home quarantine applies, the MINSA line is B/.130 instead of B/.40, and the undertaking runs forty days. The animal stays within your property and away from other domestic and wild animals for the whole period. MINSA Compromiso de Cuarentena Domiciliaria, under Decreto 1132 de 1970 and Resolución Ministerial 183 de 2001.
• Any foreigner proving they are coming to live here may import B/.25,000 of used household goods with no tax. Decreto de Gabinete 41 de 11 de diciembre de 2002, Article 216, Gaceta Oficial 24,700.
• The pensionado household-goods benefit is a separate, smaller allowance of B/.10,000. Ley 9 de 24 de junio de 1987, Article 2, numeral 1. Article 9 of the same law closes its import benefits to holders of an immigrant visa unless they renounce it in writing, which matters if you are taking residency by buying property.
• A foreign licence is good for 90 days under article 110 of the traffic regulation, while a US or Canadian passport buys 180 days as a tourist. The shorter number is the licence, so plan the conversion for the first half of your stay.
• Converting a foreign licence costs B/.40 in cash at the ATTT, with no theory or practical test on that route for categories A, B, C and D.

The four errands at a glance

Take them in that order and nothing blocks anything else. The pets set your housing. The container follows your address. The licence follows your residency card. The bank account runs on its own track alongside all three.

Bringing your pets

Start with what it costs. These are the published government fees at Tocumen, and every one of them is payable in cash.

The last two are alternatives rather than additions. Standard entry is B/.40 per animal. Where strict home quarantine is required, the figure is B/.130 instead. So one dog lands for B/.65 in the ordinary case and B/.155 in the other. A second dog of the same species adds B/.55 in the ordinary case, because the MIDA import licence is charged once per species rather than per animal, and B/.145 where quarantine applies to it as well.

The forty days at home

MINSA's home-quarantine undertaking is a signed commitment, and it is specific. Keep the animal within the grounds of your home for forty days. Prevent contact with domestic or wild species for the whole of that period. Keep the animal's environment clean, follow a vet's immunisation programme, and report any behavioural change to the Departamento de Control de Zoonosis. A MINSA veterinarian monitors the animal according to the epidemiological risk.

What the sheets do not tell you is who gets it. They price strict quarantine and publish the undertaking, but they do not set out the criteria for imposing it, so you cannot know before you land. That is the part worth planning around, because plenty of people arrive into a hotel or a short-let while they house-hunt, and that is exactly the situation the undertaking does not fit. If you are bringing an animal, book somewhere with a garden and a landlord who has said yes in writing, hold it for the full forty days, and budget B/.155 per animal. Being wrong in that direction costs you nothing.

A weekday arrival is the easier one to arrange. MINSA's undated zoonosis sheet has pets landing at weekends or on public holidays waiting in the airport kennels until the next working day, while the March 2026 airport sheet gives the zoonosis section as open Monday to Sunday. The March 2026 sheet is the later document and should govern, but both are live on MINSA's site, and a Tuesday flight settles the question for you either way.

Our guide to moving to Panama with pets has the forms, the vaccination list by species, the February 2026 decree that reset these fees, and what the arrival at Tocumen actually involves.

The paperwork, and the clock on it

Panama wants an official Certificado Zoosanitario de Exportación, an export health certificate issued by the sanitary authority of the country you are leaving, apostilled by that country's foreign ministry or consularised at a Panamanian diplomatic office, with a maximum of thirty days since issue. In the United States that certificate is commonly described as the international health certificate issued by a USDA-accredited veterinarian and endorsed by APHIS, which then goes for apostille or to a Panamanian consulate. We could not open APHIS's own page from our authoring environment, so confirm the current US-side steps with APHIS directly rather than from this description.

The thirty days is the number to build the schedule around. It runs from issue rather than from the date the certificate comes back stamped, and the legalisation step sits inside the window, so the whole chain of vet, endorsement and apostille has to finish while the clock is still running and the animal has to land before it stops. Book the vet appointment and the courier legs backwards from your flight date.

The vaccinations Panama requires, from the same sheet:

• Dogs: rabies, distemper, hepatitis, leptospirosis, parvovirus
• Cats: rabies, feline viral rhinotracheitis, feline calicivirus, feline panleukopenia
• Ferrets: rabies

Rabies must have been given from three months of age and at least thirty days before travel; in adult animals the vaccines simply have to be in date. Note that this thirty days and the certificate's thirty-day validity are separate clocks running on different documents. The vaccination card has to show dates, brand, lot number and expiry, and the endo- and ectoparasite treatments given before shipping. The animal must have no fresh or healing wounds. Legal basis is Decreto Ejecutivo 305 de 3 de octubre de 2001.

Notify MINSA three to five working days ahead by emailing the entry application, the export certificate and the vaccination card to cam@minsa.gob.pa. On arrival you present yourself at two offices at Tocumen, MIDA's agricultural quarantine office and MINSA's zoonosis control office. If the paperwork is incomplete, the sheet is blunt about the consequence: the animal is retained, or returned to its country of origin on the airline that brought it, under Ley 23 de 1997, article 39, and Decreto 1132 de 1970, article 16. Work from the Spanish version of the requirements sheet, which carries the current fees; the English translation still shows older MIDA figures and leaves the MINSA line out.

Shipping your household goods

Article 216 of Decreto de Gabinete 41 de 2002 is short and does the whole job. Foreigners who prove they are coming to establish domicile in the country, and Panamanians who have lived abroad for at least two years and are returning, may bring in their household furniture and other used household objects up to B/.25,000 of customs value with no tax paid on the import. It does not apply to a temporary return that is not a permanent move.

Nothing in that article is limited to retirees. It is the general regime, it is the larger of the two set out below, and it is the one most people moving here will use.

The pensionado benefit that comes with Panama's retirement visa is a separate and smaller allowance:

Read the two columns side by side before you choose which one to claim. The retiree version is smaller on the ceiling and narrower on the taxes it relieves, so for most household shipments the general regime is the one to file under.

There is a second point in the same law worth raising with your attorney early. Article 9 of Ley 9 says foreigners who have been granted an immigrant visa cannot claim its benefits, other than people who retired from service in the Canal Area. To use them, an applicant has to renounce the immigrant visa in writing and apply for the Visa de Turista Pensionado instead. Read literally, that excludes the property-based residency routes, which is to say the people most likely to be shipping a container. Ley 9 was written under the 1960 migration framework that Decreto Ley 3 de 2008 replaced, so how customs applies the exclusion to a modern permit is a question for your attorney. Ask for the answer in writing before the container is on the water, not after.

Article 3 adds the resale rule. Anything imported under the tariff franchise cannot be sold, rented, pledged or judicially auctioned without paying the taxes that would have been due. For household and personal articles the tax falls away if the sale happens more than three years after the exemption date. The vehicle gets no such release in the text.

On that vehicle: Ley 9 gives a pensionado a total tariff franchise every two years on one motor vehicle for personal or family use. Franquicia arancelaria is the import duty and nothing else. Panama's own trámite page for these exonerations still shows the 5% impuesto selectivo al consumo and 7% ITBMS as payable on the vehicle, so budget those two lines plus shipping even when the franchise applies.

Customs clearance itself is not a self-service process. A licensed Agente Corredor de Aduana, a customs broker, files the destination for you, and that broker is also the person to ask about filing deadlines, since much of the relocation advice online quotes a six-month window after residency that does not appear in Article 216.

What to actually put in the container

The allowance is a ceiling, not a target. A few things worth weighing before you fill it. Leather, books and softwood furniture that behaved well in a dry climate have a harder time in a humid one. Furnished rentals are common here, so a container narrows your housing search at the moment you most want it open. And a documentation error leaves everything sitting in a port warehouse accruing storage by the day.

The move that works for most arrivals is to ship what you would genuinely miss, buy the rest here, and rent furnished for the first stretch while you learn the neighbourhoods. If you are shipping a full household, get the broker engaged before you pack rather than after.

Converting your driving licence

You may drive in Panama on a foreign licence for 90 days, and that figure is in a decree rather than in folklore. Article 110 of the Reglamento de Tránsito Vehicular, Decreto Ejecutivo 640 de 27 de diciembre de 2006, says that foreigners who enter Panama as tourists cannot obtain a Panamanian licence or driving permit, and may drive only on a valid licence from their country of origin "por un periodo de noventa (90) días". The same article closes the obvious workaround: nor may they obtain a licence or permit by way of an extension. The article does not spell out when the ninety days starts running, though read against its own opening words, los extranjeros que ingresen, entry is the natural reading.

Worth knowing that US and Canadian citizens get 180 days as tourists, under Resolución 22706 de 10 de septiembre de 2021, which exempts them on reciprocity grounds from the general three-month rule set by Resolución 22068 de 1 de septiembre de 2021. So for those two nationalities the driving privilege runs out well before the legal stay does, and there is no extension to buy. Convert early.

The second thing to know is that residency ends the privilege sooner. Once your carné de migración is issued, the foreign licence stops being sufficient even if you arrived last week. Put the ATTT visit on the same page of the diary as the residency card.

Converting is cheap and mostly administrative. The ATTT charges B/.40 in cash, which covers the visual and hearing checks. There is no theory or practical test on this route, for categories A, B, C and D. What to bring:

• A valid carné de migración, original and copy. This is the requirement that makes the licence a post-residency errand rather than a pre-residency one.
• A valid passport, original and copy.
• Your valid foreign licence, plus a certified copy of both sides. Certification is by apostille if your country is in the Hague Convention, or by your embassy or consulate with the certification then authenticated at Panama's Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores.
• A blood-type certificate from a laboratory the ATTT recognises, unless your existing licence already states it. The ATTT does not publish how recent the report has to be, so ask your branch before you pay for one.
• A paz y salvo with the ATTT. An unpaid traffic fine you have forgotten about will stop the application.
• A translation by an authorised interpreter in Panama if the documents are not in Spanish.

Start the apostille or consular certification of your home licence while you are still in your own country. It is a mail-and-wait process, and it is the one step on this list that is far easier to do before you fly.

One detail that catches people on a provisional permit. The Panamanian licence issued to a foreign resident tracks the validity of the migration card rather than running the standard four years. Friendly Nations is a two-year provisional permit before permanence, as the residency guide sets out, so your first licence is short and you renew it alongside the residency. Our guide to driving licences for foreigners covers the branch process step by step.

Opening a bank account

The fourth errand runs on its own track, and it is the one where being organised in advance pays off most, because Panamanian banks build their account opening around references and documentation rather than around a counter visit. It is worth starting the paperwork gathering while you are still dealing with the movers. Our banking guide for non-residents sets out what the banks ask for and in what order.

Sequencing the move

• Bringing an animal: the housing decision comes first, and you should assume it has to be a place that can hold the animal for forty days. Fix that before you book the flight, and back-time the vet, endorsement and apostille from the landing date.
• Renting furnished at first: you can skip the container entirely, take the licence and the bank account at your own pace, and ship later once you know which town you want.
• Shipping a full household: file under the general B/.25,000 regime, engage a licensed customs broker before you pack, and confirm the filing deadline with them.
• Taking residency by buying property: get your attorney's written answer on Article 9 before you count on any pensionado import benefit.
• Bringing a car: the tariff franchise is real but partial, so budget the consumption tax, the ITBMS and shipping alongside it, and remember the resale restriction.
• Landing at a weekend: move the flight to a weekday if an animal is on it.

Your next step

Four errands, four authorities, and a fairly forgiving order to do them in. The part that is specific to you, which town you land in, whether the rental takes a dog, whether to ship the container at all, is a much shorter conversation than the paperwork suggests. Tell us your timeline, roughly what you are bringing, and where you think you want to be, and we will come back with the towns and the properties that actually fit. That is what the form below is for.

Frequently asked questions