UrBC, Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk Region, December 3, 2015. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) has been selling increasingly more products to international car manufacturers with factories in Russia. The company sales to foreign carmakers quadrupled in 2015 compared with the year 2014. MMK delivered 405,000,000 kg of galvanized and cold-rolled products to carmakers last year and 278,000,000 kg in the first eight months of 2015. Now the automobile-making industry is the company’s top priority market, so MMK’s goal is to become the market leader. MMK intends to become the No.1 supplier for

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 3, 2015. The average amount of a mortgage loan went down in Sverdlovsk Region this year, Manager of VTB24 Ural Branch Sergei Kulpin said at a press conference. ‘Mortgages used to amount to 2m RUR on average last year, now the figure is down to 1.7m RUR. Borrowers appear to have a more realistic assessment of their financial capacity. Also, prices dropped by 7% on average on both existing and new homes markets, which affected the loan amount as well,’ Kulpin said. He said VTB24 had issued 1,037 mortgage loans (with 1.9bn RUR worth of state-provided funding)

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 3, 2015. Prices went down by 6.6% on Yekaterinburg existing homes market in the eleven months of 2015, Ural Real Estate Chamber reports. ‘The average per-square-meter price gradually declines by about 0.2% a week. As of November 30, 2015, this came to 71,159 RUR,’ the Chamber’s analysts say. There are currently 11,600 apartments and over 2,000 rooms in communal apartments for sale in Ural Real Estate Chamber’s database. It still takes quite a while (4.5 to 5.5 months or longer) to make a sale. In terms of location, prices declined least noticeably (-0.4% on the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 3, 2015. Snezhnost, ChTPZ Group’s 13th annual charity festival for children, opens in Chelyabinsk on December 4 with Konstantin Raikin Higher Acting School’s Let’s Play Cartoons, the company press service reports. The Group has run this charity festival for socially vulnerable children since 2003. This year, Snezhnost is also supported by the Russian Culture Ministry. Over 7,500 children from South Ural cities will be able to see the country’s best plays at Chelyabinsk’s major theaters. Children of the Group’s employees are traditionally invited, as well as local

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 3, 2015. Every year, Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation’s head plant funds its workers and their families’ stays at health resorts and sanatoriums as part of its CSR projects. This year, for example, 5,257 workers and their children will have used this offer by the end of the year, the company press service reports. The main goal is to prevent occupational illnesses in workers employed at hazardous production departments. This year, 1,400 such employees were sent to Pine Mountains Resort, 186 people went to Ust-Kachka Resort, and 274 people went to Malachite Resort.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 3, 2015. Uraltransmash (a member enterprise of Uralvagonzavod Corporation) got its low-floor tram bogie patented, the corporation’s press service reports. The bogie was designed by the plant’s Director-General Alexei Nosov, Senior Civilian Goods Designer Sergei Soloviev, and Senior Designer Engineer Sergei Chernykh. The product was developed for Russia’s first fully low-floor tram. The wheels are mounted on independent axles and all the parts pertaining to the middle section are on the outer surfaces, which makes room for the low floor in the central section of