Chelyabinsk Region is going to devote the next five years to healthcare improvements, the region’s Governor Petr Sumin announced at a recent press conference. ‘Over the last few years, plenty of improvements have been introduced in the healthcare field in Kunashakskiy and Argayashskiy districts as well as in Varna, Chesma, Troitsk, and Chelyabinsk. We have already built a number of important facilities and we keep on working on some new ones. For one, a children’s hospital was put up in Chelyabinsk, which cost 1.3 billion RUR. Naturally we don’t have enough money for every single project, but

‘The worst part of the recession is over,’ Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin announced at an end-of-year press conference. Sumin said the year 2009 was the hardest ever for the region. The recession cut the regional budget by 43% and made the authorities decrease budget expenses by 32 billion RUR. What is more, they still had to pay the local enterprises back 10 billion RUR worth of over-paid income tax. ‘There were some grave socioeconomic problems, too: the unemployment rate tripled and reached 70,000 jobless people in May 2009,’ he noted. ‘What helped us overcome all these

‘In spite of the harsh weather conditions, 1.5 million tons of crops and plenty of vegetables have been harvested in the region this year,’ Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin said at a recent press conference. The Governor also noted 278,000 tons of meat had been produced, including 150,000 tons of poultry. ‘Our farmers have learned to manage their money well, so our agribusiness lending portfolio increased to 10 billion RUR in 2009. This money is used to improve the production facilities, launch new technologies, and implement large-scale investment projects. In 2010, the region’s

‘612 buildings have been inspected by fire safety officials in Sverdlovsk Region. Forty-nine buildings have been declared unsafe, so the businesses within will have to be closed down. Out of these forty-nine organizations, ten have already stopped operating,’ head of Sverdlovsk Region State Fire Surveillance Administration Vadim Zubarev announced at a press conference in Yekaterinburg. ‘The inspections revealed over 4,000 violations of fire safety requirements. So, 340 top executives will have to face some administrative pressure. Amazingly, only 63 out of 612 buildings (that is, 10%) have

BOD Chairman of Pipe Metallurgical Company (TMK) Dmitriy Pumpyanskiy was unanimously elected the new Chair of Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs Sverdlovsk Region division. He succeeded Vladimir Semenov in this position. The election procedure took place during an extended meeting of the Union’s regional division. This regional division of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs was founded in 1991 as an independent entity and merged with the Union in 1999. In December 2005, this organization was re-registered as Sverdlovsk Region Union of Industrialists and

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin’s official website (www.amisharin.ru) can now be found online. The Governor’s web resource provides users with some updates on the official’s activity, the Governor’s orders and provisions, and links to the websites of Sverdlovsk Region’s major government authorities. The website also features Alexander Misharin’s video blog with his first address to the region’s dwellers.

It has been suggested that Viktor Koltunyuk, Vladimir Vlasov, and Anatoly Levchenko should become Sverdlovsk Region’s Ministers for Finance, Social Policy, and State Property Management, respectively. Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin and Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government Anatoly Gredin keep recruiting a new Cabinet. The proposals for the new Ministers for Finance, Social Policy, and State Property Management were officially presented to the region’s Duma on December 21, 2009. Under Sverdlovsk Region’s Charter, the Duma must either support or turn down these proposals.

Russian people no longer fear taking loans and have been applying for them more and more often, SKB-Bank’s press officer refers to Profi Online Research analysts as saying. The analysts did a survey on consumers based in large Russian cities and came to the conclusion that the demand for loans has gone up by over 7% since the beginning of the year. For one, some 77% of respondents said they would like to borrow money from a bank in the first quarter of 2009; in the third quarter, the number of such respondents rose to 85%. ‘The economic situation is growing more stable, so Russians are

‘In spite of the harsh weather conditions, 1.5 million tons of crops and plenty of vegetables have been harvested in the region this year,’ Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin said at a recent press conference. The Governor also noted 278,000 tons of meat had been produced, including 150,000 tons of poultry. ‘Our farmers have learned to manage their money well, so our agribusiness lending portfolio increased to 10 billion RUR in 2009. This money is used to improve the production facilities, launch new technologies, and implement large-scale investment projects. In 2010, the region’s

1.4 million sq m of new housing will have been launched in Chelyabinsk Region by the end of 2009. This figure falls short of the previous year’s one by 600,000 sq m, Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin announced at his end-of-year press conference. ‘This year’s hardships experienced by the building industry actually boosted the federal housing overhaul program. As a result, about 3,000 apartment buildings have been repaired this year and 5,000 people were relocated from slums. This cost the region 4 billion RUR. The money was mainly supplied from the Communal Housing Services Reform