UrBC, Magnitogorsk, August 9, 2018. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) saved RUR 269m in the first half of the year due to implementing workers’ improvement proposals, MMK Information & PR Department reports. 73% of all submitted proposals (1,857 altogether) got approved and implemented. More than a half of these (52%) had to do with job and industrial safety issues, 15% dwelt on resource savings, 7% focused on energy efficiency, and 26% were related to other issues. The plant’s management sees improvement proposals and inventors’ projects as the basis of its personnel development

UrBC, Moscow, August 9, 2018. Toyota is calling off over 20,000 Alphard, Corolla, Auris, and Yaris units off the Russian market due to airbag issues, Rosstandart reports. ‘The automobiles are being called off as there is a possibility the Takata airbags might act contrary to plan during an accident. Should the airbag get released in cases where deteriorate substances are involved, the gas producer might get broken and its fragments might find their way inside the car,’ the company explains. The call-off applies to automobiles made between March 2010 and May 2015. The gas producer will have to

UrBC, Moscow, August 9, 2018. The Russian low-cost airline Pobeda (a member of Aeroflot Group) is going to start charging its customers €25 for checking in at non-Russian airports, TASS refers to the air carrier as announcing. The airline says the decision was made after a recent increase in jet fuel prices. Online check-in is still free. The new rule comes into effect on October 28, 2018, when Pobeda switches to a wintertime schedule. The airline has to opt for this to avoid having to raise ticket prices because of growing jet fuel costs, the company says. According to the airline’s

UrBC, Moscow, August 9, 2018. An ad hoc team of experts at Russia’s Economic Development Ministry looked into the losses incurred by the national IT sector, ISPs, and mobile carriers after they had to comply with the recently adopted amendments to the counterterrorist legislation, Vedomosti reports. It is estimated that companies will have to spend RUR 20m on average to store the data of 500,000 users. This means Yandex will have to spend RUR 3.6bn and Mail.Ru Group RUR 5.2bn all in all. The new law is expected to hit the smaller IT market players the hardest, as they have to comply with the

UrBC, Moscow, August 9, 2018. Federal Grid Company United Energy Systems keeps very stable financially: the company’s revenues rose by 1.5 times in the last five years and reached RUR 216bn; its EBITDA went up by 30% and amounted to nearly RUR 130bn. The company has paid RUR 57bn in shareholder dividends since 2014. The dividends for the year 2017 are estimated at over RUR 20bn, which is one of the best results in the power industry sector. All these data were presented at Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev’s recent meeting with head of FGC UES Andrei Murov, the company’s Western Siberia