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For the school in Montreal see Villa Maria
Villa María is the third city in Córdoba Province, Argentina and seat of the General San Martín Department. It is situated in the center of rich agricultural land: the area leads the country in production of milk. The city has a population of 75,000 (greater Villa María 100,000). It was founded September 27, 1867 by Manuel Anselmo Ocampo.
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The city
The city covers an area of 26.564 km² and the agricultural region that covers its pedanía has an area of about 600 km².
The annual rate of population growth for Villa Maria is 1.25 per cent, and the average life expectancy is 69 years 4 months. (For women 72 years and 10 days, and for men 67 years 4 months.)
The city has 21,201 lots with buildings and another 12,052 without buildings. It has 1,183 paved streets, with a total length of 147.69 kilometers; and 1,512 dirt roads, with a total length of about 188 kilometers.
The city has three institutions of higher education: The Universidad Tecnológica Nacional (founded 1970), the Universidad Nacional de Villa María (1997) and, for distance learning, the Universidad Católica de Salta (1998).
Geography
Villa María is located in the southwest of the province of Córdoba, and in the geographic center of continental Argentina, at 63 degrees, 16 minutes, and 23 seconds East longitude, 32 degrees, 35 minutes, and 28 seconds South latitude. It is 140 km southwest of the provincial capital Córdoba, on the left bank of the River Tercero or Ctalamochita.
Economy
The business sector or of Villa María, consists of 516 industrial enterprises (which represent about 9 per cent of economic activity), 3,476 comercial enterprises (about 63 per cent of activity) and 1,551 service businesses (about 28 per cent).
Villa María is the seat of the Ente Intermunicipal para el Desarrollo Regional (ENINDER, Intermunicipal Entity for Regional Development), consisting of 29 municipalities asociated to effectively project their productive potential; by this means, these municipalities have achieved the highest GDP of the provincial interior.
As much in the sector of primary production as in industry and services, today one sees potentialities thanks to the natural qualities of the region and its strategic position as a center of a vast road network. Villa Maria is an essential point of transit between the main cities of the country and the Mercosur.
Local companies, and those that decide to set up in the city, can access the fiscal benefits resulting from decrees 4.816 and 4.760.
The principal raw materials produced in Villa María are milk, cereals, meat, fodder, orchard fruits, oils, skins and leather, clay and organic material, sand, and rock.
Distances from Villa María
- Buenos Aires 550 km
- Córdoba 140 km
- Río Cuarto 130 km
- San Francisco 160 km
- La Carlota 104 km
- Marcos Juárez 120 km
- Rosario 250 km
- Mendoza 605 km
- La Rioja 600 km
- Santa Fe 350 km
- Mar del Plata 990 km
- Jujuy 1086 km
- Ushuaia 3320 km
- Montevideo, Uruguay 1000 km