Applicants willing to get a visa in order to go to the Czech Republic will now have to wait for ten rather than seven days. The spokesperson for Yekaterinburg municipal council says the consulate has to spend some extra time on looking through the applications more thoroughly, since the Czech Republic is now part of the Schengen information system and therefore has to make sure it lets through no unwelcome travelers who have been filed into a single European database. Apart from that, applicants for a Czech visa must provide copies of their Russian passports (the pages that have a stamp

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by SberInvestBank to sole traders for 181 days to 1 year went down by 98.62% (from 10.95 million RUR to 151,000 RUR) in January-September 2007.

The global liquidity crisis will strongly affect some long-term loans (given for seven to ten years) such as mortgages», Unicom Partner Universal Investment Company’s Asset Management Director Vitaliy Kalugin said to UrBC. «As for the popular consumer loans, the crisis is likely to affect those, but not as badly. Banks are actually interested in offering such loans to their customers because the interest rates can make up for even the very expensive foreign liabilities», he noted. «In fact, consumer lending is one of the few ways for banks to get some income, and they are sure to go through

Ural Airlines is going to operate its first restored flight to Gyumri on October 25, 2007. The temporary halt in performance was brought about by the overhaul given to Armenia’s second largest airport. All the repairs have been completed by now. The airline’s press officer says the recent marketing research has shown that this destination is going to be popular with business people from Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, and Kurgan Regions, as well as with the Armenian business community. In addition, the company will probably fly a lot of the military personnel due to Armenia’s important geopolitical

«In my opinion, Russian joint stock companies have grown more transparent and have got close to the world standards over the last few years», Management Company’s Investment Director Alexander Metzger said to UrBC. «This is partly happening due to the Federal Financial Market Service’s regulation and their control over how joint stock companies reveal information about themselves. Then, the issuers have gradually become better in terms of investment policies and have come to realize that having the reputation of a transparent company plays a great part when a business enters the public

A flight operated by Aviaprad was delayed once again; a plane coming from Yekaterinburg to Moscow was supposed to have taken off at 9 AM on October 16, 2007, yet the interactive timetable used in Koltsovo airport read that Aviaprad’s flight would be put off by one hour.

The value of net assets of Energy – Mixed Investments (the unit investment trust) managed by Eurogreen Management Company Ltd. went down by 13.56% between October 11, 2007 and October 12, 2007. According to Eurogreen’s website, the company’s net assets decreased from 5,167,724.44 RUR on October 11, 2007 to 4,466,971.73 RUR on October 12, 2007.

Rossvyazokhrankultury (the federal mass communications and cultural heritage watchdog) has recently inspected the performance of mobile operators to see why there have been so many complaints from their subscribers lately; the subscribers report they are being bombarded with text messages in Roman type that are regular ads or announcements. The inspection resulted in a warning given to all the operators; any text message written in Russian but in Roman type will now be classed as a violation of the rules.

«Since the new regulations on visa issuance for those willing to go to the Czech Republic are stricter than the previous ones, travel agents are bound to lose a part of their customers. Even though it is not painstakingly difficult to collect all the papers needed for a visa application, some travelers might still decide to simply go somewhere else where getting a visa is less time-consuming», Olga Gulyar, Director of Zima Leto Travel Agency, said to UrBC. Applicants for a Czech visa will now have to wait for ten rather than seven days. Apart from that, they must provide copies of their

«The demand for money orders is going to keep increasing because people are interested in having their money transferred for them at a minimal cost», President of the Association of Russian Banks Garegin Tosunyan announced at the Fourth Open International Banking Conference in Yerevan. «There are more than fifteen money order systems operating in Russia now, and none of them requires opening a bank account. People had $7.3bn transferred trough them in 2006; the increase in the cash volume has been coming to 150% to 160% a year since 2003, mainly to money being directed out of Russia», he

Ural Airlines started operating more scheduled flights from Yekaterinburg to Moscow on October 15, 2007. In addition to the existing flights, the carrier’s customers will now have more chances to fly to the capital of Russia on weekdays. The Yekaterinburg-Moscow destination is used by over 20% of the airline’s customers every month. In September 2007, for instance, Ural Airlines flew more than 25,000 passengers to Moscow, the carrier’s press officer reports. The newly introduced flights (U6 264) are operated on weekdays using TU 154 and A 320 airplanes. The planes leave Koltsovo airport in

A new agreement between SKB-Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development was approved of at SKB-Bank’s extraordinary general meeting; according to this agreement, SKB-Bank is going to receive a subordinated loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development that happens to be one the bank’s shareholders: the EBRD acquired a portion of SKB-Bank’s additional share issue in May 2007. The agreement provides for 600 million RUR that SKB-Bank is to pay back within the course of ten years. «These finances will make it possible for the bank to build up on capitalization

«Both small and medium-scale businesses can only find the startup capital they need themselves. If one does not have one’s own capital, there will be no loan from a bank, and all this talk of being able to get a loan to finance a good idea is, to be painfully honest, sheer lunacy. An entrepreneur can only use a bank’s loan offers for managing the scale of his or her working assets. It’s virtually impossible to get a loan for a long-term project as far as Russian banks are concerned; the only exception to this rule is loans that use real estate or land as the loan collateral», Vsevolod

Central Bank of Russia reports 28,646 bank notes were forged in July-September 2007. Most of these (26,580 bank notes) were 1,000-ruble ones. In addition, some forged 5,000-ruble bank notes have been forged for the first time this year, but since the number of the forged bank notes only came to six, the 5,000-ruble bills are still believed to be the best protected ones. The Bank of Russia’s analysts say the quality of the forged bills is not very good, but the 1,000 -ruble ones are usually forged best. «One’s chances of being given a fake 1,000-ruble banknote are, in fact, minuscule. The only

The Federal Antimonopoly Service started an investigation of the state of affairs at the country’s dairy market. The spokesperson for the Service reports that Russia’s six largest milk and dairy products makers (UNIMILK, Campina, Wimm Bill Dann, DANONE, Ehrmann, and Parmalat), whose joint share of the Russian market comes to more than 60%, were requested to provide the authorities with data on their production and sales volumes, their transfer prices, prime costs and profitability over the last two years. The Federal Antimonopoly Service is going to use these data to decide whether these

«We are only formally starting our Academic construction project today. In fact, things got going as early as two years ago, but this is the time for the project to be transferred from paper to soil», Mayor of Yekaterinburg Arkadiy Chernetskiy announced in the course of the solemn opening ceremony devoted to the start of construction in Yekaterinburg’s future Academic district. The Mayor said no construction projects exceeding 1 million square meters in scale had ever been implemented in Yekaterinburg or Sverdlovsk (as it was previously called), whereas the new project provided for 9 million

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by Ural Interregional Bank to natural persons for 181 days to 1 year went down by 41% (from 16.184 million RUR to 9.533 million RUR) in January-September 2007.

«The proposed bill that bans selling of CD and DVD drives as well as of other equipment meant for copying information will be extremely difficult to comply with. Users have already got tons of such drives at home, and the state will have a hard time controlling them all. Besides, this bill, should it be adopted, will make it very difficult for businesses that sell reprographic facilities to operate», the spokesperson for Breeze Ltd said to UrBC. The proposed bill in question suggests that data on every audio or video record and on every software product must be filed into a special database.

Avtostrada Corporation celebrated its seventh anniversary on October 9, 2007. Over these seven years, the company managed to enter the markets of all the Russian regions and is now supplying its customers with nonmetallic stuffs from over 100 mines. «Looking back, I should say that this dynamic development has been brought about by a whole range of factors such as the market’s great potential, our proactive expansion policy, subsidiary network development, and our always being client-friendly. Besides, having truly professional personnel has been our great competitive advantage that has

«Nearly one-third of goods produced in Sverdlovsk Region is meant for export, and our share of exported goods has been going up since 2002. Our export volumes have grown by more than 2.5 times over the last five years. The figures came to $7.5bn last year and are believed to exceed $8bn in 2007. All in all, the region’s foreign trade turnover volume is expected to amount to more than $11bn this year,’ Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government Viktor Koksharov announced at a meeting of the Russian Federation Ministry of Economic Development and Trade with Russian Union of Industrialists and