The natural person loan portfolio of Ural Bank of Sberbank of Russia amounted to over 54.1 billion RUR at the beginning of 2007, which is 17.3 billion better than a year earlier. Mortgage loans comprised around 20% of the portfolio; the number of auto loans went up 3.6 times compared to the beginning of 2006. ‘Last year, the competition on the regional consumer lending market was extremely fierce,’ says Vyacheslav Reshetnikov, Consumer Lending Director of Ural Bank of Sberbank of Russia. ‘Still, we managed to achieve impressive rate of loan portfolio growth through coming up with more and

The preferences of people who use commercial banks have changed a lot over the past year, claims a recent survey. The respondents were asked about their top-priority proviso that could actually influence their choice of a type of deposit. The survey was conducted by SKB-Bank online via the corporate website www.skbbank.ru; 150 people responded altogether. The results of the survey were compared with those of the survey conducted in February 2006. It thus appears that the interest rate offered on a deposit is still the top-priority factor for 35.7% of respondents (the majority of those

The city council and Yekaterinburg Municipal Duma decided to increase the city’s budget supply for 2007 by 1.5 billion RUR, Mayor Arkadiy Chernetskiy announced at a press conference. ‘Given the utmost budget deficit (our expenses outstrip our income by 9.9%), our experts have to be looking for additional ways of raising profits. This is why the basic rental fee for municipal property will go up 20% on April 1, 2007,’ Mr. Chernetskiy said. ‘Today, the basic rental fee for municipal property is, on average, 2.5 times less than that set for commercial property and amounts to slightly over 2,100

‘The city council is going to lay damages occasioned by the failure of the bridge across Vostochnaya St. in Yekaterinburg last year at UralHyproTrans since these were the experts from this company who designed the project,’ Konstantin Pudov, the spokesperson for the council, said to UrBC. ‘Their fault is not to be doubted, there was definitely a mistake in the project, and it was this mistake that caused the accident. This is why UralHyproTrans will have to either recoup us for the loss incurred, or undergo civil suit. We do hope, though, that the company will agree to the out-of-court

According to the report devoted to the environmental performance of the Ural division of Rostechnadzor (the state environmental and technological safety watchdog) in 2006, the enterprises of Sverdlovsk Region dumped the total of 1,229,664 tons of pollutants last year. The lion’s share of harmful substances was produced by metallurgical and fuel-energy companies (their shares in the total amount of all emissions come to 43.7% and 35% respectively). They also dumped most sulfur dioxide (49.2% and 47.3% of the total amount, respectively). The former emitted most carbon monoxide as well (the

‘The local division of the Federal Consumer Rights Protection and Human Well-Being Agency (aka Rospotrebnadzor) has been considering filing an administrative suit against Russian Standard Bank. We’ve received four complaints regarding the bank this month; all the complaints have to do with violation of consumer rights in the field of consumer lending,’ says Elena Bogacheva of Rospotrebnadzor. More and more people have been dissatisfied with the banking services lately; based on the number of complaints placed with the local division of Rospotrebnadzor and with Yekaterinburg Consumer Rights

‘The Russian Federation Supreme Court of Arbitration rejected the appeal of Home Credit and Finance Bank Ltd. for the third time. This means that the resolution made by the Ural Division of Rospotrebnadzor (the consumer rights watchdog) has been declared valid by three legal bodies,’ says Elena Bogacheva of Rospotrebnadzor. More and more people have been dissatisfied with the banking services lately; based on the number of complaints placed with the local division of Rospotrebnadzor and with Yekaterinburg Consumer Rights Committee, in most cases, this involves two certain banks, namely,

UralTransBank is the only large bank in Sverdlovsk Region with a decreasing loan portfolio, claims the rating compiled by the financial analysts of Severnaya Kazna on the basis of data provided by the largest banks of Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, Tyumen, and Perm Regions in January 2007. According to this rating, the loan portfolio of UralTransBank went down .2% in January 2007 and amounted to 6,028,371,000 RUR on February 1, 2007.

As regards Ural Federal District, the natural gas industry and the trunk pipelines had more accidents last year than before, whereas the chemical enterprises had fewer accidents, and so did companies using lifting equipment, reports the spokesperson for the Ural division of Rostechnadzor (the state environmental and technological safety watchdog). The total material damage classed as real loss was estimated at 23,575,200 RUR, which is 20% more than in 2005. TyumenTransGas was the one that sustained most losses (17,189,900 RUR). 70.8% of industrial accidents in Ural Federal District were

‘We are worried about the possible social outcomes of the dispute at Nizhnetagilskiy Metalware Plant. This enterprise plays a great part in the city’s life and economy, and we can’t let people lose their jobs and salaries due to this dispute. The council is now trying as best it can to prevent this from happening,’ says Alexander Soloviev, the chief press officer of Nizhniy Tagil city administration. ‘The upcoming council meeting will be devoted to the issue of the plant, among other things,’ Mr. Soloviev said. The representatives of Nizhnetagilskiy Metalware Plant declared the other day that

The regional division of Rostechnadzor (the state environmental and technological safety watchdog) looked at the performance of local industrial enterprises in 2006. There were eight accidents (compared to six in 2005) and 245 incidents (compared to 212 in 2005) altogether. The number of people injured at work went down from 328 in 2005 to 216 in 2006, but the number of fatal cases doubled (18 deaths in 2006 compared to a year earlier), reports Rostechnadzor’s press officer.

Regional car sales rose from 75,000 items in 2005 to 100,000 items in 2006. Dwellers of Yekaterinburg, for instance, bought 38,000 Russian automobiles and 42,000 foreign ones last year, reports the spokesperson for the Governor of Sverdlovsk Region. According to the regional statisticians, the ratio came to 46 cars per 100 average families (compared to 33 cars per 100 families as recently as 2004). Over 50 official foreign cars dealers and 200 Russian cars ones are operating in Sverdlovsk Region at the moment; there are 63 auto shows in the region altogether, 46 of which are based in

‘62% of our equipment is obsolete,’ the spokesperson for SverdlovEnergo said to UrBC. ‘This year, the company is going to double its investments in the equipment modernization, reconstruction, and construction of the new electricity supply network facility; this means we’ll have to invest 2 billion RUR against 701 million last year. We are hoping to obtain the money through long-term bonded debt, to be paid back with the help of connection fee (that is, the specific payments from the interested consumers),’ the spokesperson explained.

‘If a retail chain claims it’s eager to do business with the regional food producers, this claim is not supported by any actions. In reality, Yekaterinburg-based retailers ask for a significant entrance fee and retro-bonuses, or discounts,’ says Pavel Lyalkov, the Sales and Marketing Director of the local oil and mayonnaise producing company. According to Mr. Lyalkov, this is true of local, federal, and multinational players alike, no producer can avoid facing this. ‘The thing is, today’s grocery retailers are developing very rapidly, and bonuses are a way of developing their network. It’s

According to the Central Bank of Russia, the volume of loans given by UralFinPromBank to natural persons for a term of 91 to 180 days went down 93.5% (from 72.005 million RUR to 4.611 million) in September-December 2006.

The students of Ural State Architectural Academy are going to be awarded for winning in the competition for the best architectural design of Academic construction area of Yekaterinburg. The ceremony has been scheduled for February 22, 2007. The projects designed by the winners will become part of the final paper currently developed by Renova Stroy Group in cooperation with Valode & Pistre, the French company that developed the general town-planning scheme for the would-be Academic district. This means that the young and promising undergraduates have been given a chance to reveal their

MegaFon, the mobile operator, launched a new All-Russian tariff scheme known as Home. The name reflects the scheme’s major advantage: it offers good prices for outgoing calls within the operator’s network. ‘Now that new landline fees have been introduced, using the mobile is often more advantageous, especially if the people you call most frequently are using the same operator,’ says MegaFon’s Sales Manager Larissa Tkachuk. ‘The sole reason why the new tariff scheme has been created was to give our subscribers a chance not to think about money when communicating with their relatives and

‘15,000 enterprises and sole traders paid less than the subsistence wage worth of official salary in 2006,’ Head of Federal Tax Service in Sverdlovsk Region Gennady Bezrukov announced at a press conference. ‘Following our inspections, 91% of these businesses introduced pay rises to the subsistence wage or more, but the region’s economically depressed areas still have companies with the same low salaries,’ Mr. Bezrukov said. ‘At the same time, a number of companies came up with the new ways of paying very low official salaries such as outsourcing and outstaffing: companies are set up as

‘We have been cooperating with two federal grocery retailers, that is, Ramstore and Grossmart, as well as with most Yekaterinburg-based retail chains, excluding Kupets, and are currently in the middle of negotiations with Kupets and Auchan,’ Deputy CEO for Economics and Commerce of Good Taste Meatpacking Plant Elena Shanina said to UrBC. ‘We don’t do business with Metro Cash and Carry because we were unable to reach a suitable agreement at the time, and we never tried afterwards, since some other producers had problems supplying goods to Metro,’ Ms Shanina noted. ‘We have never been faced

‘SKB-Bank received the national solvency rating last year when RusRating gave us a B+. Besides, we were rated B2 by Moody’s in the fourth quarter of 2006,’ says SKB-Bank’s Chairman Vladimir Pukhov. ‘This is a very impressive level for a bank to achieve, and it is a sign of the business developing quite stably. Having these ratings, our bank can now hope for more favorable interest rates when borrowing on the open market. We are ready to go for a bonded debt issue, and we expect to float a 1-billion RUR loan in the first half of 2007,’ Mr. Pukhov said. ‘According to the rating presented by