The regional division of Rostechnadzor (the state environmental and technological safety watchdog) looked at the performance of local industrial enterprises in 2006. There were eight accidents (compared to six in 2005) and 245 incidents (compared to 212 in 2005) altogether. The number of people injured at work went down from 328 in 2005 to 216 in 2006, but the number of fatal cases doubled (18 deaths in 2006 compared to a year earlier), reports Rostechnadzor’s press officer.

Regional car sales rose from 75,000 items in 2005 to 100,000 items in 2006. Dwellers of Yekaterinburg, for instance, bought 38,000 Russian automobiles and 42,000 foreign ones last year, reports the spokesperson for the Governor of Sverdlovsk Region. According to the regional statisticians, the ratio came to 46 cars per 100 average families (compared to 33 cars per 100 families as recently as 2004). Over 50 official foreign cars dealers and 200 Russian cars ones are operating in Sverdlovsk Region at the moment; there are 63 auto shows in the region altogether, 46 of which are based in

‘62% of our equipment is obsolete,’ the spokesperson for SverdlovEnergo said to UrBC. ‘This year, the company is going to double its investments in the equipment modernization, reconstruction, and construction of the new electricity supply network facility; this means we’ll have to invest 2 billion RUR against 701 million last year. We are hoping to obtain the money through long-term bonded debt, to be paid back with the help of connection fee (that is, the specific payments from the interested consumers),’ the spokesperson explained.

‘If a retail chain claims it’s eager to do business with the regional food producers, this claim is not supported by any actions. In reality, Yekaterinburg-based retailers ask for a significant entrance fee and retro-bonuses, or discounts,’ says Pavel Lyalkov, the Sales and Marketing Director of the local oil and mayonnaise producing company. According to Mr. Lyalkov, this is true of local, federal, and multinational players alike, no producer can avoid facing this. ‘The thing is, today’s grocery retailers are developing very rapidly, and bonuses are a way of developing their network. It’s

According to the Central Bank of Russia, the volume of loans given by UralFinPromBank to natural persons for a term of 91 to 180 days went down 93.5% (from 72.005 million RUR to 4.611 million) in September-December 2006.

The students of Ural State Architectural Academy are going to be awarded for winning in the competition for the best architectural design of Academic construction area of Yekaterinburg. The ceremony has been scheduled for February 22, 2007. The projects designed by the winners will become part of the final paper currently developed by Renova Stroy Group in cooperation with Valode & Pistre, the French company that developed the general town-planning scheme for the would-be Academic district. This means that the young and promising undergraduates have been given a chance to reveal their

MegaFon, the mobile operator, launched a new All-Russian tariff scheme known as Home. The name reflects the scheme’s major advantage: it offers good prices for outgoing calls within the operator’s network. ‘Now that new landline fees have been introduced, using the mobile is often more advantageous, especially if the people you call most frequently are using the same operator,’ says MegaFon’s Sales Manager Larissa Tkachuk. ‘The sole reason why the new tariff scheme has been created was to give our subscribers a chance not to think about money when communicating with their relatives and

‘15,000 enterprises and sole traders paid less than the subsistence wage worth of official salary in 2006,’ Head of Federal Tax Service in Sverdlovsk Region Gennady Bezrukov announced at a press conference. ‘Following our inspections, 91% of these businesses introduced pay rises to the subsistence wage or more, but the region’s economically depressed areas still have companies with the same low salaries,’ Mr. Bezrukov said. ‘At the same time, a number of companies came up with the new ways of paying very low official salaries such as outsourcing and outstaffing: companies are set up as

‘We have been cooperating with two federal grocery retailers, that is, Ramstore and Grossmart, as well as with most Yekaterinburg-based retail chains, excluding Kupets, and are currently in the middle of negotiations with Kupets and Auchan,’ Deputy CEO for Economics and Commerce of Good Taste Meatpacking Plant Elena Shanina said to UrBC. ‘We don’t do business with Metro Cash and Carry because we were unable to reach a suitable agreement at the time, and we never tried afterwards, since some other producers had problems supplying goods to Metro,’ Ms Shanina noted. ‘We have never been faced

‘SKB-Bank received the national solvency rating last year when RusRating gave us a B+. Besides, we were rated B2 by Moody’s in the fourth quarter of 2006,’ says SKB-Bank’s Chairman Vladimir Pukhov. ‘This is a very impressive level for a bank to achieve, and it is a sign of the business developing quite stably. Having these ratings, our bank can now hope for more favorable interest rates when borrowing on the open market. We are ready to go for a bonded debt issue, and we expect to float a 1-billion RUR loan in the first half of 2007,’ Mr. Pukhov said. ‘According to the rating presented by