UrBC, Chelyabinsk, August 8, 2018. Members of Chelyabinsk Region’s and Sverdlovsk Region’s business community are planning to go on a business trip to Kaliningrad at the end of August, South Urals Chamber of Commerce & Industry’s press service reports. The goal is to network with businessmen and women working in Kaliningrad Region, to coordinate a number of ministry meetings, and to pay visits to large local plants and enterprises. ‘There will be negotiations involving certain Kaliningrad companies that the Ural businesses are interested in. To organize the talks, we are currently

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 8, 2018. Ural Airlines and QIWI Group’s Sovest are now partners, the air carrier’s press service reports. ‘Starting August 1, 2018, you can choose to pay for your plane tickets in installments using Sovest card, with no interest or commissions. You don’t even have to make a down payment if you’d rather opt out of it, and you have two months’ time to pay out the entire amount,’ the press service says. When you book your tickets on www.uralairlines.com or with Ural Airlines mobile app, select ‘Card’ as your payment method and enter your Sovest card details. You can

UrBC, Moscow, August 8, 2018. The current system of subsidizing small and medium enterprises in non-central Russian constituencies with federal budget’s funds does little to ensure business development equality in these areas, Russia’s Accounts Chamber’s report states. In 2014-2016, over 20% of federal funding allocated for SME support got directed to five out of eighty-five constituencies. In 2017, some 40% of subsidies got directed to eleven constituencies, each of which received RUR 200m or more; eight constituencies received only 0.7% of all the federal funding available. Remarkably, five

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 7, 2018. Sverdlovsk Region is now among the top five Russian constituencies in terms of plane tickets, hotels, guided tours, package vacations, and airport transfers booked online through MegaFon’s travel service, the company press service reports. Moscow and Moscow Region, Saint Petersburg, and Krasnodar Territory are, respectively, No.1 to No.4 on the list. By the middle of summer, online bookers based in Chelyabinsk Region, Perm Territory, and Khanty-Mansiysky Autonomous Region made it to No. 6, 7, and 8 in the rating, respectively. It is reported that men are

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 7, 2018. The average price of diesel fuel available on Sverdlovsk Region’s filling stations rose from RUR 43.98 at the beginning of July to RUR 44.25 per liter on July 23-29, 2018. According to the local division of Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service, the average price of diesel fuel came to RUR 43.98 on June 18-July 8, 2018. As for gasoline, the prices remained the same throughout most of July and came to RUR 43.11 per liter of AI 95 and RUR 40.29 per liter of AI 92 on average.

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, August 7, 2018. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) allocated RUR 157.4m for charity projects in the six months of 2018, the company press service reports. The projects get coordinated by MMK-sponsored Metallurg Foundation in Magnitogorsk and aim to support and improve the living standard of the elderly. One of the projects, known as The Older Generation, involves 14,000+ retirees who used to work for MMK and other local industrial enterprises; these people receive some monthly allowance to complement their old-age pensions. Additionally, 3,000 retirees who used to

UrBC, Moscow, August 7, 2018. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the new legislation to increase the value-added tax from 18% to 20% on August 3, 2018. The full text is now available on the Kremlin’s website. The new bill also sets the obligatory retirement insurance rate at 22% (within the current upper limit) and at 10% for anything beyond the taxation base. Additionally, there will still be a zero VAT on air travel in the Far Eastern Federal District. The new law comes into effect on January 1, 2019. The bill was presented to the State Duma on June 16 and signed in the third reading

UrBC, Moscow, August 7, 2018. United Company RUSAL reports its profit decreased by 31% in the second quarter of 2018 compared with the first quarter, Kommersant refers to the company report as stating. The figure reached $218m, which is, in fact, 8% more than one year earlier. In terms of half-year figures, the company’s net adjusted profit rose by 15% to $535m. The second quarter’s revenues also dropped by 18%, down to $2.25bn. However, the revenues for the first half of the year went up by 4% and reached $4.99bn. Oleg Deripaska-controlled UC RUSAL and En+ were both placed on the U.S.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 6, 2018. The number of MegaFon Ural’s customers who use their smartphones to pay for their shopping has tripled since the start of the year. According to MegaFon’s analysts, the option is mostly popular with men, who make up 70% of Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Google Pay users, the company press service says. Smartphones got used for nearly 40,000 shopping transactions at all kinds of Ural stores in July (total amount: RUR 12.1m). Every other payment was made at a grocery store/restaurant/bar/cafe/bakery. Gas-filling stations, pet shops, taxis, and pharmacies were

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 6, 2018. Nevyansk’s public prosecution authorities report on a case of air protection legislation breach at AO Nevyanskiy Tsementnik. According to Sverdlovsk Region’s public prosecution authorities’ press service, the plant’s production facilities have been emitting nonorganic dust with high silicon content, even though the cement-making company has no emission permit of any kind. Legal action was taken against the plant’s Head of Job Safety, Industrial Safety & the Environment Department, with charges based on Article 8.21 (Part 1) of the Russian Federation

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 6, 2018. UralTransBank’s branch at 7 Chernoistochinskoye Chaussee (Bldg 4) in Nizhniy Tagil closes on August 31, 2018, the bank’s SMM service announces through their VKontakte account. Now UralTransBank also closed three of its branches in Yekaterinburg in April 2018. These were the outlets at 6 Gotvald St (Bldg 4), 17 Titov St, and 15 Kosmonavtov Ave. The bank has also been on the Central Bank’s non-compliers list for sixteen months now, the regulatory body’s website states.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 6, 2018. A half-finished building of a business center at 5 Oktyabrskaya Ploschad will soon be used for a new purpose. The construction began as early as 1993; the building can now serve as ad space for Yekaterinburg’s EXPO 2025 promotion campaign. Two parts of the semi-completed structure at 5 Oktyabrskaya Ploschad in Yekaterinburg got bought out by Navigator (founder: UMMC Director-General Andrei Kozitsyn) for RUR 200m in May 2018. Yekaterinburg Duma deputy Oleg Khabibullin purchased yet another section of the building. The asset got put on sale after SO

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 6, 2018. Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court will soon be looking into Yekaterinburg-based OOO VVK’s insolvency application, the court reports. The application got submitted with the court on August 2, 2018. The claim was placed by the company’s creditor OOO Ofion, whose claims currently amount to RUR 25.167m. OOO VVK was set up as a residential and non-residential buildings developer in 2015. According to public sources, Evgeny Beloussov, who got sentenced to nine years in jail for housing fraud in March 2018, is one of the company’s co-founders. Beloussov was

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 3, 2018. Miners at EVRAZ Holding’s Mezhegeyugol Mine in Tyva proved the first to launch a set of self-advancing prop units in Russia, the holding’s res service reports. The coal is extracted from the mine through chamber-and-pillar/taking-down coal bed stoping. The new equipment will ensure safe mining process at Mezhegeyugol Mine and will also boost labor productivity. The coal extraction coefficient for valuable Zh coal type will rise to as much as 78%. For one, the miners made 35,000,000 kg of coal in June and 10,000,000 kg more in the following month already.

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, August 3, 2018. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works/MMK Group’s net profit (calculated in accordance with the IAS) amounted to $671m in the first half of the year, which exceeded the figures for one year earlier by 24.7%, the financial report on MMK Group’s website states. The Group’s revenues rose by 16% in January-June 2018 compared with one year earlier and reached $4.161bn. According to MMK analysts, the increase has to do with growing sales (+2.1%) as well as bigger average sale prices. The company’s EBITDA came to $1.21bn in the first half of 2018, which exceeded the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 3, 2018. Sverdlovsk Region division of Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) took legal action regarding an advertisement featuring B.N. Yeltsin Ural Federal University, the FAS’s press service reports. Legal proceedings got instituted after a private individual complained about an advertisement they saw on a wall at 119 Malyshev St/32 Mira St in Yekaterinburg on June 21, 2018; the advertisement read, ‘UFU Is Russia’s Best College’. The complainant pointed out the advertisement failed to provide any evidence to support their claim that UFU actually is

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 3, 2018. UralVagonZavod Scientific & Production Corporation (UVZ) declined to comment on Russian Vice Premier Yuri Borissov’s recent announcement that buying the corporation’s Armata platform-based T14 tanks would be inexpedient. This is the answer UrBC received from UVZ press service after inquiring if the company knew the Defense Ministry had changed its mind about purchasing the new-generation, Armata-based tanks, and if the company thought it likely that orders for their vehicles would still get placed by the Russian Government, despite the announcement.

UrBC, Moscow, August 3, 2018. Rectors of Higher School of Economics and Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) Yaroslav Kuzminov and Anatoly Torkunov intend to appeal to Russia’s Vice Premier Tatiana Golikova, who is in charge of all the social issues, asking to have the student loan system reintroduced. The plan was announced during a recent press conference on the results of this year’s college enrollment campaign, RIA Novosti reports. ‘Our tuition fees come to quite a bit, so we need some intermediary mechanisms for this. Ideally, these mechanisms should be provided by

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 2, 2018. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development’s customers can make card-to-card transfers on the bank’s website free of charge on August 1-31, 2018, the bank’s press service reports. The service is available on www.ubrr.ru and no sign-up/sign-in is necessary. ‘We introduced p2p transfers on our website around a month ago. Since then, the number of such transactions has been rising by 20% every week. Around 40% of these transactions are transfers to UBRD cards from cards issued by other banks. The average transaction amount comes to RUR 9,350; the

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, August 2, 2018. MMK Group’s OOO Ogneupor coordinated an amateur sports tournament among its workers last month. The event’s final stage - triathlon - took place at Veterok Resort, MMK’s press service reports. The sports competition gathered together both the tournament contestants and their supporters as well the plant’s long-service employees. Ogneupor’s Senior Engineer Andrei Anisimov, Chair of the Trade Union Zufar Zyabbarov, and General & Social Issues Manager Denis Roslyakov all welcomed the visitors to the event. The tournament began as early as January and