Chile reports solid progress.

Chile appears to be doing some things that other countries in the region are failing to do. The country's overall prosperity - as signaled by its macroeconomic statistics - looks like it is beginning to filter down to the average citizen.

What this means is that the country has taken an important step toward enlarging its consumer base - 'consumer' being defined in comparison to what the consumers in the developed nations of the world look like.

Consider that over the past decade the average annual growth rate of Chile's GDP was 4.0 percent, a solid performance for any economy. But not only that, for the same period, per capita income grew at an average annual rate of 3.9 percent.

And the news continues to be positive.

A Bloomberg news report in late May 2005 cited statistics posted on the Website of Chile's central bank that showed the economy growing 5.7 percent in the first quarter of 2005 compared with a year earlier. The bank said that the increase was due to low interest rates, and that builders and retailers were the main drivers of the expansion.

The performance of the retail sector indicates that consumers are themselves taking advantage of available credit and spending enthusiastically.

Another earlier Bloomberg News report said that April consumer prices had risen at the fastest pace in two years, mostly on the basis of higher oil prices.

In April 2005 and May 2005 the Central Bank of Chile raised interest rates twice by a quarter percentage point each time (25 basis points) to contain any inflationary pressure created by the higher oil prices and consumer spending. At the bank's most recent meeting of the Board of Directors, however, (June 7, 2005) it was unanimously decided to keep interest rates at the May 2005 level.

And, according to a story published in the June 14, 2005 edition of The Santiago Times (Santiago), Chile is alone among the nations of Latin America in meeting its Millennium Poverty Goals 10 years ahead of schedule. The countries were challenged by the United Nations to cut the number of people living in extreme poverty by half. Chile, so far, is the only country to have done that.

POVERTY DROPS BUT UNEMPLOYMENT REMAINS STUBBORNLY HIGH

The population growth rate for Chile is below the regional average, due in part to a birth rate of 17 per thousand inhabitants, which is lower than the average of 21 per thousand for South America. Job creation has not kept up with the growth of the labor force in recent years, and it is unlikely that the situation will improve further in 2005. Unemployment is running about 8.5 percent, but this appears not to affect consumer confidence.

Chile's population reached 16-million people mid-2004, which amounted to just over 4 percent of South America's 365- million inhabitants. According to data released by the Population Reference Bureau (PRB), Chile's population will reach 20-million by 2025. Also, according to that source, Chile is going to have a population of 22-million people in 2050.

The PRB revealed that a substantial 87 percent of Chile's population lived in urban areas during 2004, and that the country's population density is a comparatively low 55 people per square mile. Chile is about the same size as Norway and Sweden combined with approximately half again the population. Norway and Sweden have very low population density.

Another source of demographic data, the CIA's World Factbook, indicates that 25 percent of Chile's population was birth to 14 years old in 2004, while 67 percent was 15 to 64 years old, and 8 percent of the populace was 65 years of age and over.

CIA statistics revealed that the country's population growth rate was 0.97 percent in 2004 and the net migration rate was zero.

According to the United Nations Population Division, in the year 2050, 20 percent of Chile's population will be birth to 14 years old, while 56 percent will be aged 15 to 59, and 24percent of the populace will be 60 years of age and over.