UrBC, Yekaterinburg, January 22, 2016. The share of dollar/euro deposits at Sverdlovsk Region’s banks dropped from 19,7% down to 18% throughout last year, Deputy Chair of Ural Banking Union Evgeniy Bolotin said at a press conference. ‘This means people are losing their trust in foreign currency and have confidence in the ruble. Also, the foreign travel market shrank, so many former travelers no longer need to buy dollars or euros for their trips,’ Bolotin said. According to Bolotin, the overall share of foreign currency deposits in Russia on the whole declined from 30.7% down to 28.9% in 2015.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, January 22, 2016. Sverdlovsk Region’s city councils were unable to pay their registered unemployed their allowance on time this month, Sverdlovsk Region Labor & Employment Department confirmed to UrBC. ‘The payments really were delayed, as the federal funds did not get transferred here in time. The money came yesterday, so the problem will be solved in the very near future. These temporary setbacks occurred in virtually every city and town in the constituency,’ the Department’s press secretary Olga Rudeva said. As of January 20, there are 33,447 people registered at

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, January 22, 2016. It is reported preliminarily that housing sales decreased by 25% to 27% in Sverdlovsk Region last year, the constituency’s Construction & Infrastructure Development Minister Sergei Bidonko said at a press conference. ‘As the customers’ paying capacity deteriorated, sales dropped. Given last year’s economic circumstances, the initial decline was estimated at 40% but turned out to be less than this by the end of the year,’ he said. In the meantime, housing prices keep going down: Bidonko said in some cased the decrease reached 12% to 17%. Still, this

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, January 22, 2016. 2,180 people working for Sverdlovsk Region-based employers will lose their jobs within the next three months, the constituency’s Legislative Assembly deputy Andrei Alshevskikh refers to the local employment centers as stating. A 15-people school cafeteria in Verkhnyaya Salda is closing down; people are being made redundant at Nizhniy Tagil Railcar Depot (356 workers have already been laid off and 152 will have to follow suit); OOO Aist, registered at the foot of Mount Dolgaya in Nizhniy Tagil, is letting 94 people go. A 16-people children’s club in

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, January 22, 2016. A new cast-cooling unit underwent start-up and commissioning procedures and was launched at Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation’s head plant’s Foundry Department 1 recently. The unit relies on the new technology where the castings and the sand blend are shaken out and cooled simultaneously. The company press service reports the unit was made right at the plant’s production departments and will be used for cooling the casting stuffs that need to be filtered from sand. ‘This equipment took six months to make. We relied on the experience of using the previous make