‘Sverdlovsk Region paid over 170 billion RUR in taxes last year, which exceeds the figures for 2005 by 32%. The money influx rate increased by 32% (cf. Russian average of 25%,’ Head of Federal Tax Service in Sverdlovsk Region Gennady Bezrukov announced at a press conference. ’51 billion RUR worth of taxes went to the Russian Federation budget, 64 billion RUR wet to the regional budget, and 17 billion RUR were distributed among the region’s municipal enterprises,’ Mr. Bexrukov said. ‘Most of the payments came as income tax, VAT, and unified social tax,’ he added.

A press conference devoted to the performance of the State Environmental Surveillance division in Sverdlovsk Region and of the regional division of Rostechnadzor (the state environmental watchdog) was held on February 20, 2007. The event was attended by Nikolai Krupinin, Deputy Head of Rostechnadzor in Ural Federal District. 1,229,000 tons of pollutants were dumped in Sverdlovsk Region’s atmosphere last year, of which 43.7% were released by the local metallurgical enterprises, and 35% were emitted by the fuel and energy complex. ‘Ferrous metallurgical companies are responsible for the lion’s

Over 100,000 square meters of storehouses will be commissioned in Yekaterinburg annually beginning from 2009, Deputy Mayor Viktor Konteev announced at a meeting today. According to Mr. Konteev, only 47,000 square meters of storehouses were commissioned last year, which was not enough, given the existing shortage estimated at 700,000 to 900,000 square meters. The local authorities have already allotted four patches of land for the would-be logistics terminals in Yekaterinburg. All in all, only 62 grocery wholesalers and 73 non-food wholesalers possess storage areas of more than 500 square

Investments by both natural persons and legal entities in Ural Bank of Sberbank of Russia kept going up in 2006. The total value of natural person accounts amounted to 97 billion RUR on January 1, 2007, which exceeds the figures for 2005 by 24 billion, or by 30%. The amount of money deposited by legal entities doubled last year, and thus reached the point of 55 billion RUR, reports the bank’s press officer.

According to AviaPort.Ru, JACDEC (Jet Airliner Crash Data Evaluation Centre) has recently published its Top 50 safest air carriers rating. This rating was compiled with the help of a special method that takes into account the number of crashes a carrier has had, the total passenger traffic, and for how long the airline has been operating. JACDEC’s database includes sixteen Russian carriers, and Ural Airlines got on the list of the safest ones: its rating comes to zero and it has had no casualties so far. As for the other Russian airlines, Pulkovo Airlines got a zero rating (and 184 victims),

‘Regional companies won’t be affected by the temporary embargo on import of Russian poultry to Azerbaijan,’ A. Feoktistov, the spokesperson for Sverdlovsk Region Ministry for Agriculture and Food, said to UrBC. ‘Our enterprises are currently supplying poultry to Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, but not to Azerbaijan,’ he said. The State Veterinary Service under the Ministry of Agriculture of Azerbaijan introduced a temporary embargo on the import of Russian poultry to the country due to the recent outbreaks of bird flu in the vicinities of Moscow.

‘Factoring is a very important and promising thing for SKB-Bank and something we’re particularly proud of,’ says the bank’s Chairman Vladimir Pukhov. ‘The Ural factoring market had a million-something turnover as recently as one year ago, but we have been able to reach a new developmental stage by getting past the figure of 1 billion RUR in only six months. According to the preliminary estimates, our bank is now Russia’s tenth or twelfth largest player on the factoring market,’ Mr. Pukhov said.

‘The court’s hearing of the claim laid by Pantheon Ltd. (one of the company’s creditors) against HydroSpetsStroy Ltd. (general contractor of Noviy Grad, the developer) was left over unitl March 1, 2007,’ HydroSpetsStroy’s trustee in bankruptcy Olga Rushitskaya said to UrBC. ‘Pantheon Ltd. demands that it be included in the docket,’ Ms Rushitskaya says. The Court of Appeal of Perm has already considered the appeal of Ural Alliance, one of Noviy Grad’s creditors. The plaintiff placed a claim with Sverdlovsk Region Court of Arbitration asking to nullify the delivery contract signed by

A group of representatives of Metallurgical Industrial Complex of Nizhniy Tagil (part of Evraz Group) took part in the International Blast-Furnace Makers forum, reports the spokesperson for Evraz Group. The forum gave engineers from about thirty Russian and foreign companies a chance to discuss their improvement suggestions in the field of ferrous metallurgy. The experts of Metallurgical Industrial Complex of Nizhniy Tagil presented their improved vanadium cast-iron production method that can be used in large-size furnaces. This technique has been developed by a group of company’s experts and

The turnover of Yekaterinburg-based catering companies amounted to 8.35 billion RUR in 2006, which is 20.2% better than a year earlier. The shares of large and medium-scale businesses went down 6.7% and 31.9%, respectively. Small businesses are responsible for 68.1% of the total turnover, which exceeds the figures for 2005 by 6.7%. All these data were produced at the meeting devoted to evaluation of the consumer service development and of the Commodities Market Committee’s performance in 2006. The share of the catering companies in the total turnover of the city amounts to 4% (just as in