SKB-Bank introduced low interest rates on consumer loans on March 19, 2007, reports the bank’s press officer. The Loan to a Friend, for instance, now comes to 13,9% a year if you use it for less than a year, to 15.9% if you use it for three years, and to 16.9% if it takes you five years to pay it back. If a customer only wishes to borrow up to 250,000 RUR, only one backer is needed; two guarantors or a guarantor and a collateral are required if a customer would like to get more than 250,000 RUR. One could use their spouse in the capacity of a guarantor, too. The upper loan limit hasn’t been

Sverdlovsk Gubernskiy Bank was unable to go through with its plans related to setting up offices outside Sverdlovsk Region’s borders. The project regarding the introduction of offices in Chelyabinsk, Tyumen, and Ufa at the end of 2006 or the beginning of 2007 did not work out after all. The bank’s management announced that they intended to set up their subsidiaries in Perm, Chelyabinsk, Tyumen and a number of other Ural cities in the third and fourth quarter of 2006; this was later postponed to the first quarter of 2007, but these plans did not become a reality even at the end of March 2007:

Chkalovskiy division of the Federal Consumer Rights Protection and Human Well-Being Agency (aka Rospotrebnadzor) in Sverdlovsk Region has been receiving applications from the district dwellers regarding rumors of possible contamination of soil with anthrax since December 2006. Following the request of local public prosecution bodies, Rospotrebnadzor conducted an additional inquiry that revealed that the rumors actually have to do with the construction that takes place in a certain area of Vtorchermet district of Yekaterinburg known as Nikanorovka. As soon as the city council allots a patch

55,500 dwellings with the total area of 2,718,900 square meters were privatized in Sverdlovsk Region last year, with their share in the total number of places liable to privatization amounting to 9.5%. The local population privatized 1,083,700 dwellings (or 67.1% of all the homes in the region) since the process was made legal. The privatization rate, though, went down 13.7% vs. a year earlier, the regional statisticians report. The area of an average privatized apartment comes to 49.7 square meters; that of an average room to 17.7 square meters. Some dwellings come to be de-privatized; this

The report on the socio-economic development of Sverdlovsk Region in 2006 states that the region’s industrial enterprises produced and shipped 37.5 billion RUR worth of minerals (which is 14.3% better than in 2005), 597.7 billion RUR worth of manufacturing produce (which is 26.7% better than a year earlier), and 77 billion RUR worth of goods related to production and distribution of electricity, gas, and water (which is 27.2% better than in 2005). The industrial production index went up 6.9%, with the greatest figures achieved in industrial production (33.7%), electrical, electronic, and

Sverdlovsk Region Court of Arbitration is going to consider the bankruptcy case of SverdlovEnergoSbyt on March 20, 2007, reports the spokesperson for Sverdlovsk Gas Company. The court proceedings began after Shabrovsk Electrical Networks Ltd. (an intermediary that was supposed to be paid for electricity transfer by SverdlovEnergoSbyt) laid their claim against the company. ‘The court will definitely find out how justified this claim is; however, the very fact of starting an insolvency case in respect of a very large company, the region’s guaranteeing supplier with 75 years of history makes one

Minister for Civil Defense and Emergencies Major-General Valeriy Vlasov was appointed Head of Volga and Urals division of Department of Emergencies by Sergey Shoigu, Russian Emergencies Minister. Mr. Vlasov is to take upon his new responsibilities in Yekaterinburg on March 20, 2007, reports the spokesperson for the Ministry.

Yekaterinburg remained Russia’s fourth most densely populated city in 2006; according to Rosstat (a statistics agency), there were 1,308,000 people living in Yekaterinburg in 2006. Moscow, with its 10,425,000 people, was Russia’s largest city, Saint Petersburg (4,581,000 people) and Novosibirsk (1,397,000 people) became the second and third largest cities, respectively. As a matter of fact, the number of people living in large Russian cities has gone down since 1989. There were, for example, 1,363,000 people living in Yekaterinburg seventeen years ago, or 4.04% more than today. Fewer people

InvestEnergoProject Ltd. (acting on behalf of Evraz Group) outbid its rivals in the auction aimed at selling a 93.35% share holding of West-Siberian Heat and Power Plant. The opening bid was 5.7 billion RUR, the closing bid came to 5.95 billion. The capacity of the plant is estimated at 1,307.5 gigacalories per hour in terms of heating and 600 megawatts in terms of electricity production, reports the spokesperson for Evraz Group. The plant was originally designed for West-Siberian Metallurgical Industrial Complex which now consumes 42% of heat and more than a quarter of electricity produced

‘Enforcing bankruptcy proceedings on HydroSpetsStroy Ltd. (general contractor of Noviy Grad, the developer) is only fair when it comes to dishonest builders’, Head of Affordable Housing NGO Konstantin Bruner said to UrBC. ‘The court had all the grounds for this decision; I am even inclined to think this should have been done earlier,’ Mr. Bruner said. HydroSpetsStroy Ltd. now has to undergo bankruptcy proceedings with Olga Rushitskaya as their trustee in bankruptcy. Ms Rushitskaya has to hold a meeting of the company’s creditors and decide upon a self-regulating organization whose members