Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) is currently implementing a project aimed at bringing the company’s corporate standards in accordance with those of Gazprom (series 9000). The enterprise’s PR Department reports the new standards are being introduced to improve on the current quality management system and to raise the metal goods sales to ChTPZ Group, United Metallurgical Company, and Pipe Metallurgical Company (Gazprom’s major suppliers). Gazprom’s corporate standards are based on ISO 9001 and ISO/TU 16949 ones, with modifications specific to the O&G industry, and they comprise

‘One must admit that the real estate sector is going through a very severe crisis at the moment, so the prices are bound to keep going down. The market players report the actual transaction prices tend to be at least 20% lower than what the sellers initially ask for. I personally feel the figure looks more like 35% or even 40% rather than 20%, since, as everyone knows, the real estate prices used to be a bit of a huge bubble over the last years,’ Accord Invest Investment Company’s Deputy GD Konstantin Selyanin says to UrBC. Meanwhile, Andrei Gavrilovskiy, the local entrepreneur, announced he

ChTPZ Group’s Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant and Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant delivered 155,700 tons of tubular goods to their customers in January and February 2009, which falls short of the figures for a year earlier (that is, 256,800 tons) by 39%. Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant shipped 86,700 tons of pipes and tubes to customers in the first two months of 2009, including 55,000 tons of large-diameter pipes. In February 2009, the plant delivered 48,300 tons of tubular goods to consumers, including 29,200 tons of LDPs. Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant sold 41,000 tons of goods in February 2009 and

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel, who is now on a business trip in London, suggested in the course of his meeting with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development President that a EBRD stockholders’ meeting be held in Yekaterinburg. The bank’s President said the meeting locations had already been settled for the following three years, but the stockholders committee would still consider the Governor’s proposal.

Now that the heating season is coming to an end, Sverdlovsk Region-based enterprises, the public sector entities, management companies, tenants and real estate proprietors have come to owe Sverdlovsk Public Systems 1.00005 billion RUR. This company supplies heat, water (and water discharge services), and electricity to eight regional cities, that is, Kamensk Uralskiy, Pervouralsk, Kachkanar, Nizhnyaya Tura, Verkhnyaya Tura, Kamyshlov, Mikhailovsk, and Obukhovo. According to the company’s Commercial Director Alexander Koryukov, they are now forced to sue their debtors. 18,500 complaints worth

Sky Express Airlines flew 58,351 people in February 2009, which is 9% less than a year earlier, the spokesperson for the company says. The carrier’s passenger turnover came to 79,530,432 passenger-kilometers in February 2009, which falls short of the figures for February 2009 by 4%. The airline reports this decrease in the output figures has to do with the generally plummeting demand for air hauls. The airline flew 134,003 passengers in the two months of 2009 altogether.