Panama: Navigating New Horizons
Business Opportunities in Panama for Dutch Caribbean Companies
Multisector Report 2025
Introduction
Panama seeks to strengthen its position as the Hub of the Americas by consolidating the clustering of sectors into the five sub-hub strategy: maritime & logistics, import and export, financial services, digitalization and tourism. There has been progress in the development of these hubs.1 As can be seen in figure 1, the Panamanian GDP grew substantially over the period 2012-2024. This is in line with the development each sector has gone through. This report sets out to give a broad overview of these five sectors in Panama. It touches upon both the challenges and opportunities in respective sectors. It also looks into trade between Panama and The Kingdom of the Netherlands, and its potential, with a specific focus on the Dutch Caribbean Islands in light of the upcoming trade mission ‘Dutch Caribbean meets Panama’.