Sverdlovsk Region deputies adopted amendments to public road development project for 2006 – 2008 on April 5, 2007. Deputy Chairman of Committee for Industrial, Agricultural, and Environmental Management Policies Nikolai Krupin said the project would get 8.05 billion RUR rather than the 7 billion initially planned for 2007. Besides, the project is liable to changes throughout the year.

Sverdlovsk Region deputies approved of the legislation on public property management within the region and on privatization process in 2007 in the course of their thirty-fourth meeting. According to Deputy Chairman of Committee for Industrial, Agricultural, and Environmental Management Policies Nikolai Krupin, the region was going to spend more on repair and maintenance as well as on buying the shares of open joint stock companies.

The investigation conducted by the public prosecution authorities of Ural Federal District revealed that the local division of Rosprirodnadzor (the state natural resources watchdog) violated the civil service law. Despite the legislation and a number of presidential decrees, Rosprirodnadzor turned out not to be verifying data produced by their job applicants, which means quite a few overall conscientious workers keep violating legal norms and regulations. The case of Mr. Kiryushkin is but one instance: prior to becoming Deputy Director for Control and Coordination, he was founder and owner of

The Federal Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance Service (aka Rosselkhoznadzor) introduced temporary limits on the supplies of poultry from a Belgium-based BE E 2001 EEG/EG on April 4, 2007 after salmonella was found in some Belgian meat, says Rosselkhoznadzor’s press officer. The Service asked the Belgian food inspection authorities to look into the causes of this meat getting infected and to take steps to make sure this does not happen again. Rosselkhoznadzor also limited import of meat from German DAZ 917 EWG since the samples of ground chicken and pork contained salmonella as well.

Sverdlovsk Region deputies approved of changes made to the regional budget for 2007 on April 5, 2007. The changes were originally proposed by Governor Eduard Rossel and consist in spending the additional revenues (13,949,993,600 RUR) on socially important programs (37%), support of municipalities (42%), extra healthcare investments (additional 2.3 million RUR), additional financing of boarding schools and orphanages (330 million RUR worth of subsidies), and 42% pay rises for civil servants (extra 2.4 billion RUR). 195 million will be used to compensate the war veterans for their communication

The 9th Ural Professional Tax Forum took place in Yekaterinburg on April 5, 2007. The forum, coordinated by Ardashev and Partners, a law firm, was devoted to new techniques in tax management, ‘scheme-finding’, and businesses that aim to reach their goals at the expense of scrupulousness. This agenda was brought about by the major challenge facing the public tax officers at the moment: having to eradicate dishonest tax schemes and to create favorable conditions for those willing to do transparent business at the same time. This means an entrepreneur’s awareness of new tax administration

‘Violations by builders were our major problem last year, which mainly has to do with large-scale construction in Yekaterinburg. Unfortunately, this has had some negative side effects, including more environmental offenses,’ says Sverdlovsk Region Environmental Prosecutor Kirill Ershov. ‘Developers would often begin building without a timely examination conducted by a committee of environmental experts, and only legalized all the papers at our demand in the course of construction. Sometimes they would ignore the need for getting consent of a number of regulatory bodies, and often cut down

Russian Railway executives arrived in Yekaterinburg on business. First Vice President Vadim Morozov is expected to meet heads of Siberian and Ural Railways to discuss performance of railways despite the ongoing repairs and reconstruction. The meeting will probably be attended by acting Head of Sverdlovsk Region Railways Sergey Kozyrev, Vice Presidents Georgy Kornilov, Valery Reshetnikov, and Vladimir Vorobyev, heads of departments from Moscow as well as from West Siberian, South Ural, Gorkovskaya and Kuibyshevskaya Railways. The Board of Directors of Russian Railways decided at a meeting in

‘Yekaterinburg gambling market is experiencing a dramatic decrease in the number of players, which largely has to do with the fact that new amendments to the gambling regulation law come into force on July 1, 2007,’ says President of Ural Gambling Business Development Association Alexei Galaguzov. ‘There were 360 amusement arcades in the city last year but only 260 at the beginning of 2007, and the number will probably have dropped down to 120 or 130 by July 1, 2007. As regards casinos, there will be no more than six of them operating in Yekaterinburg,’ he reports. ‘Quite a few gamblers are

According to the Ural Chamber of Real Estate, 53% more apartments are now offered for direct sales in Yekaterinburg. The Chamber says the number has been growing steadily over the last few months: the ratio of apartments meant for later re-sale to those meant for direct sales was 57% to 43% at the beginning of 2006, but comes to 47%/53% at the moment. The supply on the local existing homes market is expected to grow between 15% and 5% a month.