El Ranco Province is one of two provinces of the southern Chilean region of Los Ríos. It is named after Ranco Lake shared by the communes (comunas) of Futrono and Lago Ranco. The lake is drained by the Bueno River, on which basin lies most of the province. La Unión is the provincial capital.

Administration

As a second-level administrative division, the province comprises four communes, each with its own governing municipality. Alsono Pérez de Arce Carrasco is the provincial governor.

Communes

Geography and demography

According to the 2002 census by the National Statistics Institute (INE), the province spans an area of 8232.3 sqkm and had a population of 97,153 inhabitants (49,485 men and 47,668 women), giving it a population density of 11.8 PD/sqkm. Of these, 51,273 (52.8%) lived in urban areas and 45,880 (47.2%) in rural areas. Between the 1992 and 2002 censuses, the population grew by 1% (924 persons).