Many clients these days are asking us about secure locations in Panama or other tax haven locations where they can safely store gold bullion, as well as silver and other precious metals. The answer is that opening your own safety deposit box in Panama to store gold bullion securely offshore is not easy, but not impossible either. More below.

The spread on buying gold in Panama is quite high, especially for smaller investors who are only interested in buying only a few gold coins. Panama does not traditionally have a gold market, and the thin demand means that gold bullion coins and bars would have to be shipped in here specially. Needless to say, the shipping and insurance costs on gold make the costs quite prohibitive unless the volume is large.

What people have been asking us recently, however, is about bringing in their own gold from elsewhere in Latin America, or even from Canada and the United States. Panama’s reputation as a secure offshore banking center makes it in attractive location to open a safe deposit box. But in this regard it cannot yet compete with places like Austria and Switzerland.

All major banks in Panama (HSBC, Banco General and Citibank to name just a few of the major banks) offer safe deposit facilities, but only for their account holders. And opening a bank account in Panama is quite a paperwork-intensive process. We can, of course, help if you choose our services for Panama incorporation – write us for details. But we cannot (yet) help out those clients who already have their gold and their corporations, and are searching for a non-bank safe deposit box facility in Panama.

The demand for this service of course comes from the instability in the financial markets – for example there is an article here on why the rich are looking to buy gold bullion offshore. These days, smart offshore investors no longer trust banks or currencies such as the dollar with their hard-earned savings, so they are looking at a gold bullion as a realistic alternative. The problem with Gold is that it raises other types of security risk – such as the danger of physical theft. Hence the need for offshore safe deposit boxes.

For anyone interested in pursuing this topic further, there’s an article here called Offshore Places to Stash Your Cash and another one on the topic of Offshore Safety Deposit Boxes that covers some new ground on the matter of safe deposit boxes both here in Panama and also offshore in places like Switzerland and Austria (for example Das Safe in Vienna, Austria)

Anyone who prefers to look at the option mentioned above (namely – to open a new corporation and safe deposit box at a major Panamanian bank, then to fly in their own gold or silver bullion) is welcome to contact us for further advice. As we write, we are also negotiating a deal with an offshore company based here in Panama with other offices over in the BVI that holds mining assets directly in South America. They are able to offer gold ingots which are available for physical delivery here in Panama. Again, feel free to contact us using our contact for or by telephone if you would like us to keep you informed about these new international business opportunities in the precious metals and gold bullion arenas.

For further interesting articles check out offshore precious metals and we also recommend Gold and Silver Investing.