The Council of Cabinet adopted Cabinet Resolution No. 58 on June 10, 2025, published in Digital Official Gazette No. 30298-A on June 11, 2025. The resolution adds numeral 22 to Article 1 of Cabinet Resolution No. 60 of June 23, 2015—the founding instrument of the Tariff Stabilization Fund (FET)—to extend the scheme of additional state contributions to the electricity sector during the second half of 2025. The estimated contribution amounts to one hundred seventy million balboas and 00/100 (B/. 170,000,000.00).

The direct beneficiaries are the three distributors of the national electricity system: Empresa de Distribución Eléctrica Metro-Oeste, S.A. (EDEMET), Elektra Noreste, S.A. (ENSA), and Empresa de Distribución Eléctrica Chiriquí, S.A. (EDECHI). Each distributor will receive from the FET the difference between the updated second-semester 2025 tariff and the average price paid in the first semester, which must be passed on to customers as a credit on their bills. The contributions do not include the Variable Fuel Charge (CVC) and remain in effect exclusively through December 31, 2025.

The cabinet cited two main reasons for the intervention. The first is the rise in international fuel prices for electricity generation relative to the values used when the current tariffs were set. The second is compliance with a ruling by the Third Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice, which provisionally suspended ENSA's Tariff Schedule approved for the 2023–2026 period, forcing the application of 2018–2022 cycle tariffs updated to June 2023 through Resolution AN No. 19632-Elec of October 22, 2024, with the resulting financial imbalance for that distributor.

Management of the contributions falls to the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF), which must identify the funds under Budget Line No. G.001640331.001.635, make at least two payments per completed quarter, and transfer the amounts to ETESA in its capacity as trustee of the FET. The National Economic Council (CENA) issued a favorable opinion through note CENA/110 of May 29, 2025, a prerequisite for cabinet approval.

The FET has operated since 2015 as a buffer against semi-annual tariff adjustments that the executive branch considers politically untenable. The chain of resolutions modifying it—more than twenty over a decade—reveals how frequently the state has intervened in electricity price formation. Critics of the mechanism point to the opacity surrounding the budgetary execution of the contributions and the accumulation of contingent liabilities with the distributors, whose real compensation depends on the MEF's available cash in each fiscal year.