AI Regulation Tracker  /  Executive decree

Panama Created an AI Subcommission by Decree

Executive Decree No. 36 of May 7, 2026, published in the Gaceta Oficial Digital two days later, is Panama's first binding, gazette-published AI governance instrument. It creates a national commission, a standing AI Subcommission chaired by SENACYT, and a duty to put a National AI Strategy in front of the Cabinet Council. It puts no obligation on anyone building or deploying AI.

By Anthony Guerriero  ·  Reviewed by Anthony Guerriero  ·  Published August 3, 2026  ·  Updated August 3, 2026  ·  Executive decree

Key facts

Regulatory briefing

Instrument

Executive Decree No. 36 of May 7, 2026 (Decreto Ejecutivo No. 36 de 7 de mayo de 2026)

Authority

Ministerio de la Presidencia. Issued by the President of the Republic and countersigned by Juan Carlos Orillac U., Minister of the Presidency. Technical chairing of the AI Subcommission sits with the National Secretary of SENACYT under Article 13.1

Jurisdiction

Republic of Panama

Status

In force. Published in Gaceta Oficial Digital No. 30520-A of May 8, 2026

Bindingness

Binding law. It binds public institutions and creates governance bodies; it imposes no obligations on AI developers or deployers

Effective date

From promulgation, under Article 17 (gazette of May 8, 2026)

Primary source

Gaceta Oficial Digital No. 30520-A, May 8, 2026

What the decree actually does

Panama has put its first binding, gazette-published AI governance instrument on the books. That is the news, and it is worth stating precisely, because the instrument does far less than the phrase suggests to most readers.

Executive Decree No. 36 of May 7, 2026 was published the next day in Gaceta Oficial Digital No. 30520-A. Article 2 declares critical and emerging technologies to be priority and strategic areas for the Republic. Article 4 creates a National Commission for Critical and Emerging Technologies as an interinstitutional and intersectoral coordination mechanism. Chapter IV then does the part that puts this on an AI tracker at all: it establishes a standing AI Subcommission and names the National Secretary of SENACYT as its chair.

The operative language is short enough to read directly:

CAPITULO IV. SUBCOMISION DE INTELIGENCIA ARTIFICIAL. Articulo 13. Como parte de las Subcomisiones Especializadas que la Comision Nacional para Tecnologias Criticas y Emergentes podra crear, en virtud de los articulos 9 y 10 del presente Decreto Ejecutivo, se establece la Subcomision de Inteligencia Artificial, la cual tendra la responsabilidad de analizar, evaluar y proponer estrategias y planes de accion especificos en materia de inteligencia artificial, en concordancia con las prioridades nacionales sobre tecnologias criticas y emergentes. [...] Articulo 14. La Comision Nacional para Tecnologias Criticas y Emergentes debera presentar para aprobacion del Consejo de Gabinete la Estrategia Nacional de Inteligencia Artificial.Executive Decree No. 36 of May 7, 2026, Gaceta Oficial Digital No. 30520-A, May 8, 2026. Accents removed for plain-text rendering

Note what Article 13 charges the Subcommission with: analysing, evaluating and proposing. Those are study verbs. The Subcommission does not license, does not inspect, does not fine and does not certify. Article 14 then turns the study function into a deliverable by requiring the parent Commission to put a National AI Strategy in front of the Cabinet Council, covering the objectives, programmes, actions and priorities for driving innovation and the ethical, responsible, inclusive and secure use and development of AI in Panama.

Article 17 is the commencement clause, and it is the shortest kind: the decree governs from promulgation. There is no transition period, because there is nothing to transition to.

Who sits at the table, and why the composition matters

The seat list in Article 13 tells you more about how Panama intends to work this file than the recitals do. The chair is the National Secretary of the Secretaria Nacional de Ciencia, Tecnologia e Innovacion, SENACYT. Sitting with him are MICI, MEDUCA, the AIG, the Secretaria de Energia, ASEP and ANTAI, plus a technical and scientific adviser with recognised experience in artificial intelligence. The record we verified lists a thirteen-seat composition, and this is it.

Six of those seats are not central government. CCIAP, APEDE, CNC and CAPATEC hold places for the private sector, and the Universidad de Panama and the Universidad Tecnologica de Panama hold places for the academic side. A subcommission with that mix is built to produce a document that industry and the universities have already seen, rather than one they receive.

Two things follow from the list. The first is that the chair sits with the science, technology and innovation secretariat rather than with either of the regulators who are at the table as members. That is my reading rather than anything the decree says, but a body whose remit is research and capability building will tend to produce a promotion-first strategy before a restrictive one. Article 14 points the same way. The strategy it orders is framed around driving innovation and the ethical, responsible, inclusive and secure use and development of AI, which is the language of an enabling document, not an enforcement one.

The second is that industry has a named seat rather than a consultation window. If your firm belongs to CCIAP, APEDE, CNC or CAPATEC, or could, the channel into Panama's AI policy runs through those bodies and it is open now, before the substance is settled. That is worth more than commenting on a draft after it exists. It is also worth more than it looks from Washington or New York, because in a market this size the number of people who will actually draft the strategy text is small and the chambers know all of them.

The energy and utilities presence is not decoration either. Putting the Secretaria de Energia and ASEP on an AI subcommission points to a strategy that treats power and network capacity as part of the AI question rather than as a separate industrial file. That is an inference from the seat list, not a statement the decree makes, but it lines up with who the decree indirectly reaches: data centre and connectivity operators, global services and BPO firms, and financial institutions operating in Panama.

Why this is architecture, not a conduct rule

Here is the distinction that decides how much of your Monday this deserves. The decree is binding law in the ordinary sense: it was issued under Article 83 of the Constitution and Law 13 of April 15, 1997 as amended, it was gazetted, and it is in force. What it binds is the state. It creates bodies, assigns chairs, allocates seats and imposes a reporting duty on a commission.

It does not classify AI systems by risk. It does not require conformity assessment. It does not create a register, a licence, a notification duty, an incident reporting channel or a penalty. It does not designate a market surveillance or supervisory authority for AI, and none was identified in the national sources reviewed for this entry. If you are a US company deploying a model that touches Panamanian users, this decree changes nothing about what you owe.

The only outward-facing power in the instrument is advisory. Article 12(e) allows the subcommissions to issue recommendations to affected public and private entities. A recommendation from a body chaired by the national science secretariat is worth reading, and in a small market it can carry practical weight with procurement officers and with regulated sectors. It is still not a rule, and treating it as one in a compliance memo will misstate the position.

I would also resist scoring this as Panama being behind. A tracker entry that reads no duties is not the same as a tracker entry that reads no work. This decree assigns a chair, fixes a membership, and attaches a deliverable to a named recipient, the Cabinet Council. Those are the three things that decide whether a policy file moves or sits. A statute with risk tiers and penalties and no institution behind it is the more common way to end up with nothing.

One caution in the other direction, since it is the mistake I see most often in country registers. Do not let the phrase binding law in the status column do work it cannot do. Binding describes the legal quality of the instrument, not the breadth of who it reaches. Decree 36 is as binding as any executive act in Panama, and the set of people it obliges is a list of state bodies. If your register carries a single binding or non-binding flag, add a second column for who is obliged, or Panama will be filed next to instruments that have nothing in common with it.

The Article 14 mandate has already produced something

An instrument that orders a strategy is only as good as the strategy that follows it, and the usual failure mode is that nothing follows for years. Here something did. SENACYT's official site records that on July 30, 2026 the Government launched the Agenda Nacional de Tecnologias Avanzadas, which integrates the Estrategia Nacional de Inteligencia Artificial together with the Estrategia Nacional de Microelectronica y Semiconductores. Count the interval yourself: the gazette is dated May 8, 2026 and the launch is dated July 30, 2026, which is under twelve weeks from commencement to a public strategy event.

Be careful about what that event establishes. Article 14 obliges the Commission to submit the strategy for the approval of the Cabinet Council. The SENACYT release describes a public launch. It is not evidence that the Cabinet Council has adopted the strategy by resolution, and this entry does not assert that it has. Anyone building a timeline for Panama should record the launch as a launch and leave the Cabinet approval question open until a gazette instrument answers it.

The same release states that Panama has joined Pax Silica, and that the National Assembly is discussing an adaptive AI governance bill. The bill is the thing to watch, since that is where binding duties on private parties would come from. It has not passed, it was not verified against an Asamblea Nacional primary source in this pass, and nothing in it should be planned against yet. The same caution applies to a criminal-code preliminary draft on deepfakes that has circulated in national coverage.

So the honest state of play in Panama as of August 3, 2026 is: one binding institutional decree, one publicly launched strategy whose formal Cabinet status is not established in the primary sources reviewed, and legislative activity that has not produced law.

The semiconductor link, and what a US firm should do

Article 16 is the piece most summaries will skip and the piece that shows what Panama is actually building. It requires the new Commission to coordinate with the Microelectronics and Semiconductors Innovation Commission created by Executive Decree No. 7 of April 30, 2024, and expressly bars it from duplicating that commission's functions.

That clause tells you Panama is treating AI as one arm of an advanced technology industrial policy that already had a semiconductor arm, rather than as a standalone consumer protection problem. The July 30 agenda, which packages the AI strategy with the microelectronics and semiconductors strategy, is the visible result of that instruction. For a US reader assessing Panama, that framing matters: the near-term output is more likely to be investment incentives, skills programmes, procurement preferences and infrastructure policy than prohibitions.

What to do about it depends on your exposure. If you sell AI products into Panama or run processing there, the practical answer this month is short. Log Executive Decree 36 in your regulatory register as an institutional instrument with no compliance obligations, so that nobody on your team later mistakes it for a rule. Record SENACYT as the technical chair, since it is the body you would engage with, and note that Panama has not designated an AI supervisory authority in this decree.

If you have Panamanian revenue worth defending, do the other thing: get a view into the Subcommission through the chambers that hold seats, and read the National AI Strategy when its text is available rather than reading coverage of the launch. Strategies are where the definitions, the sector priorities and the eventual scope of a statute get drafted, and they are far easier to influence than a bill in committee.

And if you are simply tracking jurisdictions, the trigger to watch is the National Assembly, not the Presidency. This decree is the institution. The duty, if one comes, will arrive as a statute, and until it does the correct entry for Panama is a governance framework with no obligations attached.

Last verified: August 3, 2026 against the primary sources listed above.