Chile is 4,300 km long (north to south) and on average only 175km wide (east to west), resulting in a varied climate ranging from the Atacama Desert, the world's driest, in the north, through a Mediterranean climate in the central region to a snowy climate in the south, with glaciers, fjords and lakes.

The country has a land area of 756,096 km2. The capital city is Santiago and the population is approximately 16 million consisting largely of people of mixed Spanish and indigenous descent. Chile is relatively free of crime and official corruption.

Chile has Latin America's fastest-growing economy in the 1990s and has weathered recent regional economic instability reasonably well. It faces the challenges of having to further diversify its copper- dependent economy and make more advances in narrowing its wealth gap.

The current president is Ms. Michelle Bachelet. Bachelet won the second round of presidential elections in January 2006, promising to reduce unemployment and to boost economic growth. Her government is expected to follow closely in line with the policies of the prior president, Mr. Ricardo Lagos Escobar, who held office for the previous six years.

In 2005, Chile’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) expanded by 6.2%, up from 5.9% in 2004 and 3.8% in 2003. In 2005 the positive external factors (principally strong commodity prices) underpinning this acceleration heightened. However, GDP is still forecast by the Chillean government to expand in the second half of 2006 by roughly 6.0%, driven mainly by domestic demand, with the construction and retail sectors likely to show the highest growth.

Chile is by far the world’s largest copper producing country, accounting for approximately 35% of world copper production. The next largest producer is the U.S.A.., accounting for approximately 8% of world production. The copper belt in Chile hosts the largest copper deposits in the world. It follows a north-south trend along the deep-seated West Fissure Fault system. This copper belt, which is shared with Argentina and Peru, contains approximately 30% of the world’s identified copper reserves. The Andes copper deposits also contain other valuable minerals such as molybdenum, gold and silver which are co-products and by-products of the copper refining process and Chile is also the world’s largest molybdenum producer, accounting for approximately 25% of world production. Copper production in Chile was 4.9 million tones (Mt) in 2003, 5.3 Mt in 2004 and increased to 5.5 Mt in 2005. Mining contributes approximately 10% of the total GDP and over 40% of all Chilean exports and the Chilean government expects mining to continue to grow by 5% annually through to 2006. Chile exported US$7.6 billion of primary copper in 2003 with its main export market being Asia, followed by Europe. The state-owned mining company, Codelco, is the world’s largest copper producer, but privately owned mines (including those with international ownership) account for about half of Chile’s copper production and have been increasing their share of the market steadily over the past few years.

Apart from copper mining, Chile also produces other metallic commodities such as iron, lead and zinc, gold and silver. There is currently no production of uranium in Chile.