A new spectrophotometric method for the determination of palladium has been developed, based on the reaction of palladium (II) with molybdate and rhodamine B(RB) to form an ion-association complex in the presence of poly (vinyl alcohol). The molar absorptivity at 585 nm is 4. 06 × 1051 mol−1cm−1. Beer's law is obeyed over the range 0∼4 μg of palladium per 25 ml. The molar ratio of Pd to RB in the complex is established to be 1:4. Over 30 foreign ions were tested. The method can be applied to the spectrophotometric determination of microamounts of palladium in samples of aluminium based and active carbon catalysts.