March 20, 2015. Changes in the ruble exchange rate make Yekaterinburg street artists switch from foreign paints to their Russian counterparts, Director of StreetArt Agency and Curator of Stenograffia Festival Evgeniy Fateyev told UrBC. ‘Paints, especially imported ones, grew two to two and half times more expensive. We retained our partnership with Montana and will work with Russian manufacturers. Most probably, we’ll be using noticeably more home-produced paints than foreign ones. Luckily, the quality of the former is already good enough,’ Fateyev says. StreetArt executive says the current

March 20, 2015. According to the Russian Labor Ministry, arrears of wages increased by 14% last month. This had to do with businesses lacking the money and with delayed transfers from all kinds of government budget funds, Gazeta.ru reports. Minister Alexander Topilin says the owed amount came to nearly 2.9bn RUR on March 1. According to Rosstat, the overall amount of delayed pay fluctuated between 1.9bn RUR (January 2014) and 2.7bn RUR (June 2014) over the last twelve months. The sum went down to 2bn RUR in January 2015 and then sky-rocketed to nearly 3bn RUR. Debts caused by delayed

March 20, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region Accounts Chamber determined that a total of 3,920,660,300 RUR worth of local budget funds got spent inefficiently last year; this was nearly four times worse than in 2012 and 2013, the chamber’s annual report states. According to the report (which UrBC has access to), the inefficient use of public property assets amounted to 3,442,232,800 RUR, while unsatisfactory claim-related work amounted to 181,400,400 RUR. The report also states that 87.8% (3,443,033,200 RUR) of these inefficiently used funds were spent by the Mid-Urals Development Corporation and Center

March 20, 2015. ChTZ Uraltrac (a member enterprise of Uralvagonzavod Corporation) is going to deliver a set of tractors to ALROSA. The corporation’s press service reports two B10M straight-blade bulldozers and one swamp tractor T10MB (to be used as a towing vehicle) are meant for Botuobinskaya geological survey expedition. Head of Local Sales Division Evgeniy Gerbut says all the machines have D180 engines that were manufactured on site. Based on the customer’s specifications, these engines are complemented with a number of customized options. Botoubinskaya expedition is based in Mirniy and is

March 20, 2015. A group of delegates from Omsktransmash (a member enterprise of Uralvagonzavod Corporation) took part in PromTechExpo/Siberian Industry & Innovations Forum. According to the corporation’s press service, the plant’s Director-General Igor Lobov joined a round table discussion on how large, medium, and small enterprises could cooperate inter-industrially within a hi tech components cluster and within Omsk Region’s petrochemical cluster. Cooperation between small and large enterprises, which becomes particularly relevant under current economic and political conditions, was the