The 9th Ural Investment Forum devoted to the year-long recession and its developmental potential began in Chelyabinsk. The event was attended by some foreign business executives, the legislative and executive branch officials, representatives of Ural Federal District’s constituencies, heads of regional industrial enterprises, banks, financial companies, and SMEs, and mayors of Chelyabinsk Region-based towns. The forum began with the opening speech by Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin. ‘The forum has already become a traditional event and a good meeting place for networking, sharing

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin held a meeting with the investors participating in the 9th Ural Investment Forum. The Governor noted that despite the economic hardships the local investors were not going to back out of their plans, even though some of the projects had to be delayed. The previous year’s forum, for example, resulted in 107 agreements (worth $14bn or 400 billion RUR) that were signed by investors, the regional government, and the local municipalities. Of these 107 projects, twenty have already been implemented successfully, while the rest are still in progress. Petr

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin sent an official letter to the Russian Federation Agriculture Minister Elena Skrynnik, asking her to change the official procedure of crop trading in the country. This year, the Russian Federation Government decided to buy out crops from a number of Russian farms, including sixty Chelyabinsk Region-based ones that had been accredited to take part in the trading process. According to the spokesperson for the Governor, only 9,000 tons of wheat crops have been sold through the Ural Stock Market since November 2, 2009 when the trading started. Even though

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court keeps looking into the claim laid by Legion Commercial Bank against Uralvagonzavod Federal State Unitary Enterprise. The plaintiff demands to be paid 10 million RUR. The bank took the case to court in order to get the 10-million-ruble payment on the promissory note UVZ № 0000254 as of August 23, 2006. The plaintiff provided the court with the original of the note in the course of the preliminary hearing. Uralvagonzavod refuses to meet the creditor’s demands: the company claims in its response that the plaintiff is not, in fact, a legitimate promissory note

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court supported the ruling of Sverdlovsk Region division of Rospotrebnadzor (the consumer rights watchdog). The division insisted that Uraltransbank face administrative liability. It is believed that the bank’s repair and construction agreements contained some terms that infringed upon the consumers’ legal rights, so the bank therefore violated the consumer rights protection laws. For one, when a customer takes out a loan needed for these repairs and construction, the bank makes them pay an incidental commission for the management of the loan and a monthly

President of the Republic of Byelorussia Alexander Lukashenko met Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin in the course of Chelyabinsk Region officials’ visit to Byelorussia. According to the spokesperson for the Governor, Alexander Lukashenko and Petr Sumin spoke about the main directions of and the new ways of the two territories’ trade and economic cooperation. President Lukashenko drew his interlocutor’s attention to the fact that both Russia and Byelorussia were faced with the formidable challenge of establishing a new type of confederacy which was expected to improve the two