The number of gun owners has decreased over the past year in Chile from 5.3% to 4.9%. Yet one economic sector—the wealthiest Chileans from the socioeconomic level ABC1—continue to buy firearms at an escalating rate.
Chile has some of the worst social indicators of the 34 countries that make up the Paris based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, according to the latest releases from the group.
The Chilean fruit industry is being threatened by the rapid decline of the country’s bee population, a product by the country’s ongoing drought.
Water shortages across central Chile are withering the flower buds, depriving bees of their sustenance, the nectar.
The Chilean wine company Viña Montes plans to invest 20 million US dollars in vineyards on the other side of the Andes in neighbouring Argentina, where it expects to double production over the next five years.
The region with the largest increase in military expenditure in 2010 was South America, with a 5.8% increase in real terms, reaching a total of 63.3 billion US dollars according to the latest report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI.
Chile and the world’s southernmost town, Puerto Williams, is to open up to mass tourism under a new investment program approved by the government.
British music icon Paul McCartney has confirmed that he will play the Estadio Nacional in Santiago on May 11 this year. It will be the star’s second show in Chile; he played the same venue in December 1993.
Business is booming in Chile as the nation’s top 20 major businesses increased their revenue by 18% in 2010. The largest increase in profits came from Chile’s mining sector, where profits grew to 10.9 billion US dollars last year, up 60% since 2009.
The number of foreign tourists visiting Chile rose 9.2% during the first quarter of 2011 in relation to the same period last year, according to Tourism Secretary Jacqueline Plass. A record-breaking 1,043, 042 tourists entered Chile between January and March, at the height of the summer tourism season.
Argentina’s government is opening a new path to Tierra del Fuego that will give travellers, who once had to pass through Chile to reach the southernmost tip of the continent, the option of skipping Chile altogether.