UrBC, Moscow, October 30, 2015. The prices mobile breakdown services charge drivers have gone up by 10% to 20% in the last year, Avtostat refers to Russian Auto Moto Club as saying. The said mobile breakdown services include vehicle recovery and basic ‘first-aid’ options such as a jump start, some gasoline, and wheel changing. In Russia on the whole, Moscow drivers get charged the most; breakdown vans in Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk have the second highest prices, those operating in Saint Petersburg and Yekaterinburg are in the third place, and those operating in Rostov-on-Don, Samara, Ufa,

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 30, 2015. Sales of new cars on Yekaterinburg market declined by 43% in the nine months of 2015, Auto-Dealer-Yekaterinburg reports. 32,268 new automobiles have been sold since the start of the year, including 3,712 cars sold in September (down 41% on a year earlier). KIA and UAZ/Lada (both currently among the ten best-selling brands) improved their sales in September, with the Korean brand even becoming last month’s No.1. Still, Lada remains the market leader throughout January to September overall. ‘Despite a dramatic drop in sales, Lada is highly likely to remain

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 30, 2015. Prices went down by an average of 5.8% on Yekaterinburg existing homes market in the ten months of 2015, Ural Real Estate Chamber reports. The average asking price of a square meter of housing came to 71,828 RUR on October 28, 2015. The demand went up a little following the summertime seasonal decline, but it still remains low. However, sellers are still actively putting new offers on the market, so the overall existing homes market supply has gone up by nearly 48% since February. There are currently 11,550 apartments and over 1,900 rooms in communal

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 30, 2015. ChTPZ Group’s employees and alumni of the Future of White Metallurgy, the company’s corporate training program, are going to take part in the 2nd WorldSkills Russia Championship, a blue-collar jobs competition, the company press service reports. The Group’s contestants have won various rounds of WorldSkills Russia before. For one, Alexander Ilyinykh and Roman Barkhatov won silver medals in WorldSkills Russia and the 1st WorldSkills Hi Tech Russia in Mobile Robotics, while Anton Shalakhov, who got the bronze in WorldSkills Russia in Kazan last year, will

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 30, 2015. The Russian Federation Government and Sverdlovsk Region Government adopted an action plan for easing the tension on the area’s labor market; one of the steps is introducing a blue-collar training program at Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation’s head plant. Around six hundred workers are expected to undergo the training. According to the corporation’s press service, the program will be multi-fold. ‘Firstly, the idea is to train new blue-collar cadre, namely, sling operators and digital data processors. Secondly, we plan to offer professional development training

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 29, 2015. Uraltransmash (a member enterprise of Ural Vagon Zavod) coordinated a trade union conference. Chairman Yuri Vakulski presented a performance report for 2011-2015, the company press service reports. 'The conference was held before the take-off of the Collective Agreement Campaign, which is scheduled for November 2015. The plant's trade union contributes to the campaign in that it helps draft the agreement and controls its implementation. As Vakulski pointed out in his report, not a single social benefit was cut at the plant in the last five

UrBC, Chelyabinsk. October 29, 2015. MMK Group and ChTPZ Group held their 17th coordination committee meeting together to discuss their strategic cooperation. MMK PR & Advertising Center reports experts from the two companies' production, technological, sales, and logistics departments produced their performance reports for the eight months of 2015 and spoke about their future interaction in terms of supply, product quality, orders for the fourth quarter of the year, and working together for oil and gas companies projects such as Nord Stream 2. 'Our two companies both have

UrBC, Pervouralsk, October 29, 2015. ChTPZ Group's employees took part in the company's stand-up comedy competition. The event was held at Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant Palace of Culture, the company press service says. Five teams competed for the prize: M/F, Quality Mark, Shop Territory, Good Acquaintances, and Guests from the Future (a team of Pervouralsk Metallurgical School students). The Group has been coordinating similar contests since 2009. In this round of the competition, the first prize went to Quality Mark, so this team will now compete with the other finalists for the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 29, 2015. Eli Yamin Blues Band brought its show to Seversky Pipe Plant (a member enterprise of Pipe Metallurgical Company/TMK), TMK press service reports. The band comprises four virtuoso musicians, who took the audience's breath away in America, China, Mali, Japan, and Europe's best concert halls. The CC Machine Tune Show was dedicated to the one year since the launch of the company's FQM mill, commissioned by Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev in October 2014. Over 1,300 plant workers came to dance to the blues; the show finished off with the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 29, 2015. The number of people out of jobs who did not register with any employment agencies came to 137,700 between January and September 2015, head of Rosstat's Sverdlovsk Region division Elena Kutina said at a press conference today. 'There are 2,352,900 people of working age in the area at the moment, of whom 2,215,200 are employed and 137,700 people are out of jobs but looking for new ones,' Kutina said. According to Kutina, 36,600 locals got officially registered with the employment services. 30,000 are classed as unemployed and 24,200 are

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 28, 2015. The number of available job openings on Yekaterinburg banking market went down by 22% in the third quarter of 2015 compared with a year earlier, HeadHunter reports. September’s figures are also 3% below those for August 2015. This year, Banking is still one of the five segments of Yekaterinburg labor market with the greatest numbers of vacancies (11.9% of the entire market against 13.5% last year). In fact, Banking was the second biggest pool of vacancies, preceded only by Sales. As for the number of CVs/job applications, these make up 4.1% of the city’s

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 28, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region did not become one of Russia’s five constituencies with the greatest amount of commissioned new housing in January-September 2015. Rosstat reports Moscow Region is the current leader, with 7.2% of all new housing in Russia constructed there. This constituency is followed by Krasnodar Territory (6.8%), Moscow (4.6%), Bashkortostan (3.8%), and Saint Petersburg (3.7%). Sverdlovsk Region and Novosibirsk Region (3.4% each) shared the seventh place on the list, directly after Leningrad Region (3.5%).

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 28, 2015. The average price of a liter of gasoline came to 35.03 RUR in Sverdlovsk Region in September 2015, which exceeded the figures for July by 2.12 RUR, Rosstat reports. The average price of AI 92 and AI 95 went up to 34.03 RUR and 36.35 RUR per liter, respectively. That of diesel fuel reached 34.8 RUR. In fact, gas prices increased in seventy-five Russian Federation constituencies: by 1.8% or more in five of them and by 2.8% in Kamchatka Territory. Prices also went down in four constituencies: for one, they declined by 0.9% in Ryazan Region. End-user prices

UrBC, Moscow, October 28, 2015. The Russian Government adopted a decree allocating 15,401,498,000 RUR in subsidies to the agricultural sector; the decree is available on the Cabinet’s website. The money will be directed to the federal constituencies which, in their turn, must distribute the money to reimburse their local farmers on the interest rates they pay on their crop-farming loans. Sverdlovsk Region will be allocated 111.545m RUR, while the neighboring Kurgan Region will receive 113.385m RUR. Belgorod Region, Tatarstan, and Kaliningrad Region will receive the largest subsidies:

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 28, 2015. Healthcare funding provided by Sverdlovsk Region Government as part of the obligatory medical insurance package might be reduced to 3.8bn RUR next year, head of the city council’s Healthcare Department Alexander Dornbush said at Yekaterinburg Duma meeting. According to the Duma’s press service, Dornbush explained that the newly adopted unified gender/age coefficient meant the insurer’s reimbursement would come to 180 RUR per hospital visit, whereas in 2014, the figure came to 210 RUR. Also, the allocated funding for Yekaterinburg clinics and hospitals

UrBC, Chelyabinsk, October 27, 2015. Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant/ChTZ (a member enterprise of Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation) will deliver seven B11 bulldozers to Russia’s Spetstroy, the Federal Special-Purpose Construction Agency, this October, the corporation’s press service reports. ‘The bulldozers will be sent to the agency’s divisions in Izhevsk, Saratov, and the Kurile Islands, namely, Iturup, where one of our vehicles will be used for infrastructure development,’ the press service says. Spetsstroy’s Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk representative Alexander Gromov came to the plant for the acceptance

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 27, 2015. Yekaterinburg food manufacturers supplied 27.772bn worth of produce to their customers in the nine months of 2015, the city council’s press service reports. There are currently seventy-two food-making companies in Yekaterinburg, making bread and pastry, meat and dairy products, and soft drinks. ‘Our customer preference surveys indicate most locals choose to buy locally made foods,’ the press service says.

UrBC, Moscow, October 27, 2015. Novouralsk might no longer be a limited-entry town after January 1, 2016, Russia’s Economic Development Ministry says in the draft bills uploaded on the federal normative acts website. In fact, as many as six Russian cities might lose their special limited-entry status: Zelenogorsk, Krasnoyarsk Territory, Novouralsk, Sverdlovsk Region, Zarechny, Pensa Region, Zvezdny, Perm Territory, and Lokomotivny, Chelyabinsk Region. All the technicalities involved are supposed to be dealt with within nine months.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 27, 2015. Under the Russian Government’s program on Boris Yeltsin Ural Federal University’s development in 2010-2020, the university’s funding for the period will be cut by 144m RUR against the original figure. The updated version of the program is now available on the government’s website. The overall budget for the years 2010-2020 now comes to 9.856bn RUR (including 4,98bn RUR to be supplied from the federal budget and 4.876bn RUR expected to be made in terms of profit). Additionally, 12 new monitoring and 7 new performance indicators have been introduced to the

UrBC, Moscow, October 27, 2015. The net profit of Russian companies (excluding small enterprises, banks, insurance companies, and organizations in the civil service sector) is going down; according to Rosstat, the figure went down by 77% in August 2015 compared with one year earlier. Remarkably, Deputy Economics Minister Alexi Vedev said earlier: ‘We have been criticized for our over-optimistic expectations. Yet our net financial outcome is up by 37% in the eight months of 2015 compared with the eight months of 2014.’ Now Kommersant reports the profit growth rate slowed down to 23.9% in