Thirteen carriages loaded with corn ran off the rails at Shalya-Perm section of Sverdlovsk Railways. The company says all train transition has been closed down at this section of the road for the time being, with passenger trains using another branch line. Emergency trains from the nearby stations were sent for in order to fix the problem. No casualties have been reported.

‘Foreign workers are currently leaving the local markets. We are a law-abiding company, so they will have disappeared completely by April 1, 2007. The vacancies are being filled by Russian citizens quite reluctantly, however,’ says PR Director of Taganskiy Ryad (one of Yekaterinburg’s largest markets) Lyudmila Belousova. ‘We also expect the prices to go up beginning from April. Foreigners used to both deliver the goods to Russia and sell them here, but now the Russian intermediaries will take their advantage of the transactions. The range of products is also likely to grow less diverse with

URSA Bank is holding a special Spring-Love-URSA Bank advertising campaign in 23 Russian cities from March 4 to March 18, 2007, reports their press officer. The campaign, estimated to involve at least 80,000 participants, is targeted at informing as many people as possible about the merger of SibAcademBank and Uralvneshtorgbank that resulted in the emergence of URSA Bank last December. The campaign in Novosibirsk, for instance, lasted five days (March 4 to March 8), the press officer says.

‘Noviy Grad (the local developer) illegally pulled down an important historic building (a merchant’s house at 72 Khokhryakov St.) a while ago and put up a multi-storey apartment building on the site. The authorities are now thinking of the best way out and of where this architecturally valuable exhibit should be restored. One obviously cannot use the original site since the developer is still constructing the new building using natural persons’ investments,’ reports Konstantin Bruner of Affordable Housing NGO. Ural State Economic University was given a land allotment near the site by the

Uralmashzavod (part of United Machine Building Works (aka OMZ, formerly United Heavy Machinery)) signed a contract regarding production of two cement mills with MordovCement on February 28, 2007. The contract is the result of a tender held in February 2007; the equipment (whose total weight is expected to come to 200 tons), designed by Uralmashzavod experts, is to be supplied in September or October 2007. The plant delivered similar machines to MordovCement in 2005-2006, and the latter has been using them successfully. The two parties are hoping to keep cooperating as MordovCement is

SverdlovEnergo now has a new General Director: former chief executive of UdmurtEnergo Mikhail Dralin will run the company beginning from March 14, 2007. The company’s former GD Vladimir Calsin will now be employed in the capacity of Deputy CEO for Service Issues of Urals and Volga Interregional Network Company.

‘Autonom has been using car loan offers from the majority of local banks. Despite the fact that these offers are, on the whole, quite similar, each particular purchase requires a certain bank for reasons of best convenience. This is why we sign agreements with these banks and our experts then explain the customers which scheme will best work for them,’ says Natalia Sedova, Lending and Insurance Director of Autonom auto show. ‘The so-called express loans that require very few papers and economy loans (with the interest rate of no more than 13% a year) enjoy the greatest demand, so we are

‘509 complaints regarding insurers of Ural Federal District were placed with the local division of Federal Surveillance Agency in 2006. 82% of all complaints are related to obligatory car insurance and, as a matter of fact, we get the same kinds of complaints every year. To start with, most insurance companies fail to pay the money on time (that is, within fifteen days). They also tend to pay less and question the damage assessment. One way to handle this problem is to have one’s car serviced at a particular garage that has a special agreement with the insurer rather than take money,’ says

‘Noviy Grad, Evropeyskoye, and Hephaestus Works Ltd are the companies that give us the better part of our hard time,’ reports Evgeniy Melnichenko, Director of Federal Licensing Center in Ural Federal District. According to Mr. Melnichenko, among their main offences are lack of managers with higher or vocational education (10%), shortage of equipment, machines, and facilities (20%), lack of regular professional training among engineers and therefore violations of quality control (20%), and violating the existing legal standards and norms (40%).

According to Kommersant newspaper, the authorities of Perm and neighboring regions are now working at attracting more large carriers, so Ural Airlines might start performing flights from Perm in the very near future. The local government decided upon this airline as well as a few others because, for one, they were unhappy with S7 Airlines (aka Siberia). CEO Ural Airlines Sergey Skuratov said the carrier intended to offer flights from Perm to Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Sochi, Anapa, the countries of the CIS, and some popular overseas resorts. According to Mr. Skuratov, they are going to use Tu