UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 12, 2020. Ural bankers believe the CBR reducing the key rate this February will have a positive impact on the interest rates banks charge on mortgages and on the services aimed at business customers. Now the Bank of Russia’s Board of Directors held this year’s first meeting last week (February 7) to look into the CBR’s lending/monetary policy and to bring the key rate down by 25 b.p., down to 6% p.a. Analysts believe the latest statistical data on inflation that were made available at the beginning of the year served as the primary decision-making factor in this.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 12, 2020. Ural Airlines carried a performance report for January 2020, the air carrier’s press service reports. The year started off with a 15% increase in passenger traffic. ‘693,571 people flew with Ural Airlines in January (up 15% on a year earlier), including 343,175 passengers on the airline’s domestic flights and 350,396 passengers who traveled internationally. 4,960 flights got operated last month (up 12% on January 2019), including 2,485 domestic flights and 2,475 international ones. The passenger turnover rose by 15% and reached 1,706,731,000

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 12, 2020. 43,700 mortgages (total amount: RUB 89.8bn) got issued to Sverdlovsk Region-based applicants in 2019, press service at the Bank of Russia’s Ural division reports. The annual interest rate came to 8.96% on average in December 2019, which was below Russia’s average (9%), Ural Federal District’s average (9.07%), and Sverdlovsk Region’s average for December 2018 (9.68%). ‘The share of mortgages issued for shared-equity housing construction projects soared last year and rose to as much as 31% of all mortgages issued in Sverdlovsk Region. These mortgages

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, February 12, 2020. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) supplied 2,564,000,000 kg of rolled metal goods to customers in the pipe-manufacturing industry in 2019, which exceeded the figures for one year earlier by 27%, MMK’s Information & PR Department reports. This has been the second largest supply amount in the plant’s post-Soviet era history so far. The only time MMK supplied more goods to pipe manufacturers was in 2014, when the overall amount came to 2,780,000,000 kg. ‘The pipe-manufacturing industry is MMK’s key home market, with 31% of all the home sales

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 12, 2020. ChelPipe Group’s team won seventeen medals at the Sverdlovsk Region round of the 8th WorldSkills Russia Championship, the Group’s press service reports. The large-scale competitions took place on the sites of vocational schools, including ChelPipe Group’s Training Center in Pervouralsk. Over 700 contestants competed in 105 different skills categories. Students on ChelPipe Group’s Future of White-Coated Metallurgy In-Company Training Program Mikhail Sarapulov, Stepan Makarov, and Danil Komarov won gold in Reverse Engineering, Industrial Mechanics &