Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin suggested in the course of President Dmitriy Medvedev’s meeting with Ural Federal District’s Governors that a so-called infrastructure decade should be proclaimed and implemented in the country. ‘I believe that it behooves the government at the time of a crisis to focus its economic efforts on the total reconstruction of our road and transport infrastructure and the building industry. The infrastructure decade would be of paramount importance,’ he said. The Governor also said that Chelyabinsk Region’s strategic development needed some powerful backup

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) has successfully undergone the environmental management audit procedure aimed at checking the system’s compliance with the ISO 14001-2004 international standards. The audit was carried out by Germany-based TUV NORD CERT GmbH. The procedure involved sixteen production departments, with both directors and employees showing a lot of improvements, meeting all the environmental goals for 2008, and exposing good skills of using the environmental management system in process control. TUV NORD CERT’s experts came to the conclusion that MMK’s environmental

Seven Ural Federal District-based banks were featured in RBC.Rating’s list of the country’s top hundred largest banks in terms of net asset volume in January-September 2008. Three of these banks are located in Tyumen Region, another three – in Sverdlovsk Region, and one bank is based in Chelyabinsk Region. SKB-Bank was given the 72nd position in the rating. RBC.Rating’s analysts report the bank’s net asset volume had come to more than 36.901 billion RUR by September 2008, which was 29% better than at the beginning of the year. The figure also secured SKB-Bank’s three-point promotion in the

A Bracker hydraulic press meant for testing pipes under pressure has recently been upgraded at Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant’s OCTG shop. The upgrading program included the installation of the new hydraulic power station and the replacement of the high-pressure units in order to avoid any hydraulic impact during the test hydraulic impacting process and to make the machinery more effective and reliable. The upgrading means the pressure can be made higher for the testing, which, in its turn, will result in a wider range of tubular products the plant will be able to offer its customers. The

Bank Monetniy Dom (formerly known as Mechel-Bank) reports its CONTACT money orders are now available from Finland. The international system’s outlets were introduced in Helsinki at the end of November 2008, with over 5,900 new access points launched all over the world since the beginning of the year. ‘CONTACT is becoming increasingly popular both in Russia and abroad, so the list of cities where the service is available keeps getting longer. For one, the system’s 2,800 new outlets were introduced in 500 more cities between September 15, 2008 and November 30, 2008. Most of these were set up in