UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 5, 2016. Sverdlovsk Region’s consumer price index for July 2016 exceeded that for a year earlier by 7.5%, Sverdlovskstat reports. Against July 215, food items grew 8.1% more expensive, non-food items grew 9% more expensive, and the price of alcohol drinks and services rose by 6.5% and 4.9%, respectively. Against January 2016, food items, non-food items, alcohol drinks, and services grew 3.2%, 4.5%, 5%, and 4% more expensive, respectively. Inflation rate in July rose by 0.6% against June 2016.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 5, 2016. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development (UBRD) issued over 2,500 loans (amounting to more than 600m RUR all in all) in July; this was a record-setting figure since September 2014 for online loan-issuing. According to the bank’s press service, the average loan amount came to 238,350 RUR. UBRD’s new customers prefer to apply for A Minute’s Work, Open, and Retirement loan offers, while existing ones apply for loans offered as part of the bank’s loyalty schemes. ‘The share of loans issued on the basis of an online application came to 40% of all the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 5, 2016. Interfax Center for Economic Analysis carried its ranking Interfax 100 Russian Banks in late July listing the Russian banks with largest undistributed profits, assets, and own funds in the first half of the year. Metcombank was among the country’s top hundred banks in all three respects. The bank’s press service reports Metcombank was also the most successful Urals-based bank among the five Ural banks that made it to the ranking. For one, the bank rose from the 96th position as of December 31, 2015 to the 90th positions as of June 30, 2016 since its assets

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 5, 2016. Tank Biathlon took off at Alabino Range in Moscow Region; Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation is acting as the event’s partner this year. According to the corporation’s press service, the company supplied seventy T 72B3 and forty BMP 2 combat vehicles for these games; the plant is also in charge of technical assistance: more than thirty experts from the corporation’s eleven member enterprises are responsible for vehicle maintenance and crew training. Eighteen teams from Russia and other countries such as, for example, Kuwait, Serbia, and Zimbabwe are going to

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 5, 2016. Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation’s Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant (ChTZ) restored a number of social benefit schemes that had to be cut down on earlier because of the dropping domestic demand for road vehicles, the corporation’s press service reports. ‘The management and the trade union have already decided to provide employees with monthly subsidies to cover their children’s kindergarten fees. Every parent employed at the plant will be given 235 RUR a month, every single parent 470 RUR a month. Besides, parents of children under sixteen will get their children’s