Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin met Vasily Prudnikov, head of Byelorussian consulate in Yekaterinburg, on April 10, 2007. Mr. Prudnikov said Chelyabinsk Region and Byelorussia kept building up their economic ties. The two parties’ trade turnover, for example, rose by 29% in 2006 and amounted to $236m. Chelyabinsk Region-based companies have been supplying rolled metal to Byelorussia, whereas Byelorussian enterprises export their machine-building produce and instruments to Chelyabinsk Region. According to the spokesperson for the Governor, Mr. Sumin and Mr. Prudnikov tried to

The 18th congress of the Association of Russian Banks took place in Moscow on April 6, 2007. The items on the agenda included the success of Russia’s Bankization Program, improvements in the country’s monetary policies, development of the Russian banking market, and banking supervision (and its importance to the banks’ development and competitiveness). Reports were presented by President of the Association G. Tosunyan, Chairman of the Central Bank of Russia S. Ignatiev, head of Federal Financial Markets Service O. Vyugin, Bank 24.ru Chairman Boris Dyakonov, and a number of Bank of Moscow,

‘Ford Focus, whose price varies between $17,000 and $19,000, is probably the best-selling car in Yekaterinburg at the moment. 1,500 Ford cars have been sold in the city since the beginning of the year,’ reports Sales Manager of AutoLand’s Ford show room Ilya Tolshin. ‘In terms of sales, Ford was last year’s No.1 in Russia, and I believe it will keep the position in 2007 as well. It largely competes with Toyota, Mitsubishi, and Hyundai,’ he says.

The recent meeting of Sverdlovsk Region Duma Committee for Budget, Finance, and Taxes was devoted to the legislation on the inter-budgetary transfers regarding subsidizing municipalities’ social welfare expenses. The law was adopted in July 2005 and resulted in setting up a municipal development fund worth 1.28 billion RUR and a regional co-financing fund worth 303.7 million RUR in 2006. However, only 44 out of 72 regional municipalities received subsidies last year; 28 of them failed to get on the list due to budgetary lack of money needed for investment projects or due to failed deadlines.

‘A large-scale fight occurred at a construction site in the center of Yekaterinburg at 5 AM on Monday,’ the spokesperson for Sverdlovsk Region Department of Internal Affairs said to UrBC. ‘Upon receiving a report to that extent, militia men arrived at 11 Kranovshchikov St. to find out that eight young men, armed with a gun-like object and some bludgeons attacked twelve people, stripping them off everything they had. One of the offenders, a 27-year-old builder, was captured. He said that the attack was actually a fight between the local workers and the guest ones because of the money owed by

‘Following the arrival of favorable statistical data on the American labor market last Friday, Asian stock markets went up 1% on average. Investors had been waiting for more trading pits in the U.S.; internal factors contributed to this growth as well,’ says Alexander Pimenov of BrokerCreditService. ‘RTS reached its highest point ever (1,973.83) in the middle of the trading session. The 2,000-point record is also quite likely to be set due to oil shares growth (and this, in its turn, is probable enough thanks to possible increase in oil prices),’ Mr. Pimenov said.

An Industrial Design Center will be set up in Yekaterinburg, says Rector of Ural State Architectural Academy Alexander Starikov. He reports that three such centers will be introduced in Yekaterinburg, Moscow, and Saint Petersburg in 2007-2009, with the center in Yekaterinburg becoming the pilot one – it was chosen since the local school of design is believed to be one of Russia’s best. The project will be financed by the federal and regional budgets. The centers are meant for supporting home producers in their attempts to compete globally. ‘Our entrepreneurs have finally had it brought home

‘One of the regional builders used my name and the name of our NGO to send a blackening letter to the local authorities. I believe this was done at the order of Noviy Grad’s management,’ Chairman of Right to a Dwelling Vasiliy Ganzhin said to UrBC. ‘The letter contains dubious data on Ural Alliance; the company is accused of low-quality performance and unauthorized construction. What I would like to particularly emphasize is that Ural Alliance is an honest and law-abiding developer, so any criticism leveled against them is false and ungrounded. I have never said anything to that extent,’ he

2,756 claims and applications were sent to Plenipotentiary Representative of Russian Federation President in Ural Federal District in January-March 2007. 67%, 15%, 7%, 5%, 3%, and 2% of them were filed by the citizens of Sverdlovsk Region, Chelyabinsk Region, Khanty-Mansiyskiy Autonomous Region, Ugra, Kurgan Region, Tyumen Region, and Yamalo-Nenetskiy Autonomous Region, respectively. 21.7% of claims concerned issues related to availability of dwellings and the quality of housing maintenance; 12.5% had to do with the performance of the regional departments of internal affairs, 10.3% dwelled

URSA Bank proved quite successful in the first quarter of the year. Its balance sheet total reached 147.7 billion RUR on April 1, 2007, which exceeds the figures for a year earlier by 3.9 times (that is, the figures for SibAcademBank - as it then was). The bank’s net wealth went up 3.3 times and reached 107.8 billion RUR. The resource base grew 3.4 times; in addition, the bank managed to attract 5 times the amount of last year’s foreign investments due to cooperating with a number of international financial bodies: the IMF, for example, invested 42.2 billion RUR thanks to Eurobond portfolio

‘Local people mostly choose Turkey and Egypt to go to for the May recess. On average, it costs about 20,000 RUR to go to any of the two countries,’ Commercial Director of Bosfor Travel Agency Alexei Satarov said to UrBC. ‘In the spring, one normally prefers lying on the beach in the sun to going to Europe; we have already sold the lion’s share of tours to Egypt,’ Mr. Satarov said.