Spanish
Panama City.- The Government of Panama regularized on-demand ground transportation services on digital platforms, such as Uber or Indrive, as "luxury taxis" to limit them as intermediaries by supervising fares, prohibiting the acquisition of vehicle fleets to operate them and establishing a special license for drivers, who must be Panamanians.
The new regulations, through an executive decree issued on Thursday night, establish that transportation is under the "registration, control, supervision and inspection" of the Land Transit Authority (ATTT) of Panama.Thus, "the fare for the luxury selective public land transport service requested through technological intermediation (...) will be regulated, taking into account its conditions, additional comfort specifications and other cost structures", describes one of the articles.
The rates for on-demand transportation on digital platforms in Panama are low, taking into account supply, demand, peak traffic hours, and the type of vehicle, hovering around two or three dollars per kilometer. Similarly, they limit the provision of the service "only through technological intermediation" and prohibit companies from platforms from directly acquiring or managing, or through an intermediary, vehicles for the provision of the transportation service. In addition, they decree a battery of conditions such as a certificate of operation for the "luxury taxi", the ease of electronic or cash payment, the obligation that the transport be in "good condition" by having air conditioning and a visible sticker with the platform logo. The driver must meet requirements such as being Panamanian, an existing driver's license exclusively for taxis or digital platforms, have the endorsement of the "authorized land transport organization where the vehicle is registered", be free of fines and not have been "criminally sanctioned" in the last 10 years.You may be interested in: Uber and Nvidia will launch robotaxis with artificial intelligence starting in 2027
And, to avoid piracy, that "driver whose vehicle is detected providing the service in violation of the provisions" in that decree "will be sanctioned for violation of the Traffic Regulations for providing public transport service in an unauthorized vehicle". In Panama, there are two digital transportation platforms, Uber and Indrive, which mainly operate in the Panamanian capital with the possibility of picking up passengers at Tocumen International Airport, the country's main airport, in an area of the parking lots. In November 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Spanish application-based transportation company Cabify ceased its services in Santo Domingo and Panama City after a "constant process of analysis" of the markets in which it operates.
