UrBC, Moscow, September 30, 2015. Russian Minister for Economic Development Alexei Ulyukayev said railway fares might go up by 10% in the year 2016, Kommersant reports. ‘I see a 10% price increase as possible, given that no subsidies will be allocated from the national budget to freight forwarders,’ he said. According to the Minister, the government is also considering raising the mineral replacement tax for metallurgical enterprises. Besides, it is possible that Bank of Russia’s profits prove an extra source of budgetary income. ‘In my view, the Central Bank’s profits might be at play. There

UrBC, Moscow, September 30, 2015. Russian air carriers flew approximately as many passengers between January and August 2015 as they did in the eight months of 2014. The Association of Russian Tour Operators reports, however, that the ratio of domestic and international travelers shifted dramatically, with over a half of all flights operated by Russian airlines becoming domestic ones. The Russian companies’ overall passenger traffic declined by 0.6% in August; the number of international passengers went down by 16.3% (which continued the trend of a two-digit-percentage decrease in traffic in

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 30, 2015. The overall amount of past-due foreign currency consumer loan repayments reached $33.945m in Sverdlovsk Region by early September, which exceeded the figures for a month earlier by 15.4%, Central Bank reports. According to the Bank of Russia, the amount of past-due ruble consumer loan repayments actually decreased from 8,402,194 RUR down to 8,177,414 RUR, or by 2.6%. The bank also reports the overall amount of past-due repayments on loans, deposits, and other financial packages issued to banks in rubles rose drastically by as much as 34 times (from 80m

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 30, 2015. A 300-meter-tall skyscraper will be put up in Yekaterinburg by 2023 in celebration of the 300 years since the city was founded, deputy head of city council for capital construction and land use Sergey Myamin said in his interview to Open Studio. Yekaterinburg on Channel 41-Domashniy. ‘The idea was already under consideration during the Innoprom 2015 Exhibition. An agreement to go through with the project has already been signed by the city council and Ural Mining & Metallurgical Company,’ Myamin said. The official explained the skyscraper would

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 30, 2015. Omsktransmash (a member enterprise of Uralvagonzavod Corporation) managed to secure enough customer orders to keep its casting department running and thus reduce the number of prospective layoffs considerably, the corporation’s press service reports. The company management announced three months earlier that 454 positions were being done away with; eighty of these were vacant at the time, and 374 workers were informed that they would have to be made redundant. Thanks to the new orders, only 39 actual workers would have to be let go, and 115 vacant

UrBC, Chelyabinsk, September 30, 2015. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) took part in a conference on freight forwarding in the Black and Caspian Sea basins in Batumi, Georgia. MMK Senior Transport Management Director Rustam Giniyatullin presented his report on metallurgical cargo, its volume, key shipping destinations, current priorities, and forecast for 2015-2016. MMK keeps trying to improve its sea shipping logistics. For one, uniting sets of cargo into larger shipping lots results in decrease in costs and the time it takes to process cargo at the port of loading. So the company’s