Potosí is one of the nine departments that make up the country Bolivia. Its capital is the Potosí homonym, famous for its deposits of precious metals, which transcended to the thesaurus or to the lexical stock of the Spanish language with the prayer is worth a Potosí. It is located in the south-west of the country, bounded on the north by the departments of Oruro and Cochabamba, on the east by Chuquisaca and Tarija, and on the south by the Argentine Republic, up to the Cerro Zapaleri hill, where the border with the Republic of Chile begins. West. According to the last official census carried out in 2012, the department has a population of 828 093 inhabitants.
The density is 7.7 hab / km² being the third less densely populated department - ahead of Beni and Pando-. The department was founded on January 23,1826 by the marshal of Ayacucho Antonio José de Sucre. Administratively the department of Potosí is conformed by 16 provinces, that at the same time, these are divided in 40 municipalities. The municipality of Potosí is the most populated with a population of 191,302 inhabitants, concentrating to 23.10% of the total departmental population. Other municipalities also of importance for the amount of population that they have are the following respectively: Llallagua, Tupiza, Villazón, Colquechaca, Betanzos, Cotagaita, San Pedro de Buena Vista and Uyuni.
The economy of the Department of Potosí is among those with the greatest economic expansion during the last years, since it has traditionally been characterized as a mineral producing department, which has allowed it to become the fifth largest departmental economy in the country - after Santa Cruz, La Paz, Cochabamba and Tarija -. According to official data from the National Institute of Statistics of Bolivia, in 2016 the economy of the entire Department of Potosí reached US $ 2,096 million dollars, which represents 6,16% of the Total Economy of Bolivia. In terms of per capita income, the department closed 2016 with US $ 2,399 on average for each potosino.