November 28, 2014. Only two-thirds of Russian companies are planning to have New Year parties for employees; every one in five businesses can’t make up their mind just yet, Superjob reports. A survey involving 2,000 HR managers and other personnel departments representatives working for Russian companies revealed the following: 65% of respondents confirmed their companies had already made plans for a New Year party. 41% of such businesses are going to have one at a restaurant, 14% are planning to celebrate at the office, 4% will go to the countryside, and 6% will decide on some other way of

November 28, 2014. Nizhniy Tagil Council is currently negotiating with METRO Cash & Carry on the construction of their shopping outlet in the city, Vse Novosti refers to Nizhniy Tagil Industrial Policy & Business Development Director Andrei Sedykh as saying in his interview to Ecoradio. The supermarket is expected to be built next to the city’s Southern Entrance. No specific deadlines have been set yet. As for Sverdlovsk Region altogether, the only METRO Cash & Carry outlets here are located in Yekaterinburg: there are three METRO supermarkets there.

November 28, 2014. Milk and dairy products prices will keep rising despite government control and surveillance, Ilya Bondarev, Chairman of Urals’ Stock Farmers Union, a non-profit organization, said at a press conference in Yekaterinburg today. He explained milk grew more expensive because of the weakened ruble and because of the way harvesting campaign turned out in Sverdlovsk Region. ‘We had a difficult time harvesting the year, it was impossible to stock up on good quality forage. The raw stuffs output might therefore go down. Besides, agricultural vehicles became more expensive, as did

November 28, 2014. Ural Federal District’s consumer price index came to 105.5% in September 2014. For food items, the figure came to 107.9%, for non-food ones – to 103.9%, for services – to 105.3%, Sverdlovskstat reports. Ural Federal District’s residents received 471.3bn RUR worth of services in January through September 2014. This is 1.7% more (as measured by volume) than in January-September 2013.

November 28, 2014. Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation coordinated a professional skills contest for its process and design engineers. According to the corporation’s press service, over sixty young workers from the corporation’s member enterprises have joined in the contest for the first time this year. They come from Nizhniy Tagil-based Uralvagonzavod and Ural Scientific & Technological Integrated Works, Nizhniy Novgorod-based Burevestnik Scientific Research Institute, Omsk-based Omsktransmash, and Yekaterinburg-based Uraltransmash and Plant 9. There were two stages to

November 27, 2014. ORENAIR is not planning on re-launching its Yekaterinburg-Hannover flight in the spring and summer of 2015, the airline’s press service informed UrBC. As a matter of fact, the air carrier introduced a direct Yekaterinburg-Hannover flight on June 3, 2014; flights were operated through September 9. According to Koltsovo Airport’s press service, no application was submitted for the flight in the fall/winter season. ‘This was actually a seasonal flight that was only offered in the summer. 30 round trips were offered to customers, with 50% seat occupancy on average. This is

November 27, 2014. Omsk Transport Machine-Building Plant (a member enterprise of Uralvagonzavod Corporation) fulfilled its government defense order for 2014 in time and started working on the next year’s contract, the corporation’s press service reports. This year’s contract provided for Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s member enterprise giving overhauls and upgrades to T72B3 tanks and doing repairs of T80 ones. The repaired and upgraded armored vehicles were delivered to a wider range of locations this year, including military units in all of the country’s military districts (most of the T72B3s

November 27, 2014. 3,619 Sverdlovsk Region-based employees have been made redundant since the beginning of the year, Deputy of Sverdlovsk Region Legislative Assembly Andrei Alshevskikh wrote in his blog, referring to the data provided by the local employment agencies. The laid-off workers used to be employed by the twenty-five largest enterprises in the area. Novolyalinsky Cellulose Plant made 830 workers redundant, while Energomost, Uralasbest, Novouralsk-based Transport & Logistics Center, and Mining Machine-Building Plant let go 558, 472, 242, and 142 people, respectively.

November 27, 2014. Three new projects within the Titanium Valley Special Economic Zone have been approved by the Russia’s Ministry for Economic Development expert committee. The projects are estimated to require 1.8bn RUR worth of investments altogether, Governor of Sverdlovsk Region’s Information Policy Department reports. The Valley’s new residents Infercom-Ural, AS Group Investment, and Basalt Projects are to work on the following: Construction & Operation of an Eco-Metallurgical Plant (Infercom-Ural), Hi Tech, Energy-Saving Construction Goods Production (AS Group Investment, with

November 27, 2014. 63,192 new light passenger vehicles were sold in Yekaterinburg in January-October 2014, which is 19% less than in the ten months of 2013, Auto Dealer Yekaterinburg reports. ‘Some brands made their best monthly sales in October thanks to the government fleet of vehicles renovation program that reached its full capacity last month,’ says Auto Dealer Yekaterinburg’s Director Mikhail Chaplygin. Among the top ten best-selling brands, Renault (673 units, +8%) and Skoda (230 units, +16%)did the best, even though only Renault managed to increase its sales in September. Mitsubishi

November 26, 2014. Three Sverdlovsk Region-based enterprises were granted the status of a ‘priority investment project participant’, with over 35.2bn RUR allocated to them altogether. Three more companies applied for the status as well, with expected 8.4bn RUR in terms of investment. The applications are expected to be processed before the end of the year, Governor of Sverdlovsk Region’s Information Policies Department reports. According to the Investment & Development Minister Alexei Orlov, Sverdlovsk Region might introduce a special investment tax loan as soon as 2015; the loan is, in

November 26, 2014. Stroitelstvo Scientific Research Center is going to co-organize 100+ Forum Russia 2015, an international conference on high-rise construction, in Yekaterinburg next year. The city council’s press service explains the center’s management met with the Managing Director of the Urals’ Developers Guild Vyacheslav Trapeznikov, whereupon the decision to co-organize the event was made. ‘Stroiteltstvo Scientific Research Center, a major scientific establishment, agreed to act as the co-organizer of the forum. This is a big achievement. We expect the number of the forum participants

November 26, 2014. Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation’s head plant delivered a multi-purpose TMV 2 to SamaraTransneftTerminal. According to the corporation’s press service, the decision to buy the loco was taken by the Samara-based company’s management within just a few days of operation. With its ‘body on frame’ design, this TMV 2 outstrips its counterparts (including foreign ones) considerably in many ways. The loco is meant for moving railway carriages around premises of industrial enterprises and repair depots and is a great alternative to a diesel-locomotive shunter

November 26, 2014. Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s head plant in Nizhniy Tagil hosted the 12th Research-to-Practice Young Workers Conference. According to the corporation’s press service, workers from member enterprises based in Omsk, Yekaterinburg, Ishimbay, Kirov, Kamensk Uralsky, Nizhniy Novgorod, and Nizhniy Tagil spent two days looking into production diversification as a vector for the corporation’s innovative development. 328 young experts from 118 divisions of the corporation and its member enterprises made their reports at the conference. Discussions were dedicated to Company

November 26, 2014. Holi Fazlitdinova, a resident of Nevyansk, was prosecuted for providing foreign residents with a fictitious residence address, the spokesperson for Sverdlovsk Region public prosecution authorities reports. It was detected in the course of an inquiry that Fazlitdinova allowed foreign residents to provide her own address as their residence address when registering with the local migration service between December 2013 and July 2014. Nine citizens of one of the Central Asian republics thus declared to have a place of residence at an apartment in Tavatui, Nevyansk District,

November 26, 2014. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) won the Competitive Bidding Leader Prize 2014 in the category called Economic Efficiency of Purchasing Transactions, the company reports. Respectable experts on the contest judges’ panel listed MMK among the companies which proved last year’s purchasing leaders and set high standards that all the other competitive bidding market players look up to. The ongoing improvements in the company’s supply chain mean MMK can reduce the prime cost of its metal products and therefore offer the market more appealing prices. The company

November 25, 2014. Sverdlovsk Region’s official unemployment rate came to 1.05% on November 1, 2014, which was 0.1% less than in November 2013. The figures were actually even lower than the average in twenty-seven cities and towns within the constituency, Governor of Sverdlovsk Region’s Information Policy Department reports. 24,353 people registered with the local employment agencies as looking for jobs as of November 1, 2014, whereas the number of job adverts placed by local employers was 2.5 times greater than the number of the unemployed. This means the tension coefficient (the

November 25, 2014. ChTPZ Group and Severstal held their 17th Coordination Council on Cooperation at Severstal’s site in Kolpino, the Group’s press service reports. The two parties looked at their performance results in the three quarters of 2014 and talked about ways of improving the quality of their rolled metal stock, about both companies’ participation in the oil and gas pipeline projects (including, for one, the Power of Siberia). In fact, Severstal already delivered 4,000,000 kg of rolled metal K60 to ChTPZ Group’s Vysota 239 Department this year; the metal will be used for the Power of

November 25, 2014. Oil prices kept rising on Monday, November 24, a trend that has continued from last Friday. This is the first week since September when this ‘black gold’ has shown some improvement, Bank Koltso Urala’s press service reports. ‘Brent for $80 a barrel came as good news for the Russian ruble. Russia’s national currency fluctuations have tended to be isomorphic with the oil price changes lately, so, as the profit-mongers can no longer trace the ruble’s movements within a trading band against the dollar-euro basket, the foreign currency market started following the oil one in

November 25, 2014. Yekaterinburg Central Stadium will get fully reconstructed in twenty-two months’ time, Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Evgeniy Kuivashev said in his interview to R-Sport. ‘The preliminary reconstruction stage is nearly complete, so the internal parts of the stadium can get dismantled in December. The reconstruction project will probably be approved of by experts during this winter, whereupon construction can take off. According to our roadmap, the whole process will take twenty-two months. This is definitely in plenty of time for the championship. As a matter of fact, we