UrBC, Moscow, December 5, 2016. Russians’ factual income and consumer demand keep going down, banki.ru refers to Head of Accounts Chamber Tatiana Golikova as stating. ‘Consumer demand has been in decline for the second year in a row. This year, people’s spending is estimated to go down by 4.6% (compared with 5.3% in the ten months of the year), which is directly related to people’s shrinking incomes (-5.6% by the end of the year according to the government’s forecasts),’ Golikova said. The official also said consumer prices would go up a little faster in December than in the previous months,

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 5, 2016. The non-state retirement fund Buduscheye is about to merge with a number other Russian non-state retirement funds, the fund’s director Nikolai Sidorov reports. Last year, the fund set a market precedent by embarking on a merger with StalFond, a major non-state retirement fund; this year, Buduscheye is ready to start managing Uralsib and Nashe Buduscheye. Sidorov says M&A is the current market trend rather than the particular choice of a few certain pension funds. As the security and financial performance requirements grew stricter in the last two or

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 5, 2016. ChTPZ Group’s 14th Snezhnost Children’s Festival will open at M.I. Glinka Chelyabinsk State Opera & Ballet Theater on December 8, the Group’s press service reports. The opening show called Classics for Children will be presented by the musicians of P.I. Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory (founded 150 years ago this year). ‘Since it was set up fourteen years ago, the festival has grown to be a very important cultural event in the Urals. Over 150,000 young visitors have enjoyed this experience so far. Every year, the program grows bigger, with

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 5, 2016. A new receiver got launched at Rosatom’s Ural Electrochemical Works (UEKhK) in Novouralsk as part of the company overall facilities upgrades program, the plant’s press service reports. Rosatom’s acceptance board had the receiver tested and approved for pilot production in September 2013. It was decided that the plant’s new technology for filling tanks with uranium hexafluoride should be tried out in field conditions. Some fifty filling cycles have been carried out in the course of pilot production since October 2013. The new technology has meant the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 5, 2016. Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation’s head plant in Nizhniy Tagil completed the capital repairs of its day-patient facility at the plant’s medical unit, the company press service reports. The solemn opening ceremony took place a few days previously, with the plant’s Executive Director Vladimir Roschupkin cutting the symbolic red ribbon. According to Roschupkin, the day patient unit now has everything necessary to ensure the patients’ comfortable stay. The repairs were funded by Ural Vagon Zavod. ‘It took us six months to get ten patient wards and a treatment