January 18, 2016. Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant (a member enterprise of Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation) paid some of its basic debts with the state and corporation’s support last December and is now ready to expand its production. According to the company press service, all the delayed wages and salaries have been paid out to workers in full. The better part of the overall amount was paid even before December, the rest was directed to the employees’ accounts before New Year. The wage and salary payments came to 425m RUR altogether. The plant also paid all of its taxes and directed payments to the

January 18, 2016. The price of gasoline came to 34.42 RUR per liter in Yekaterinburg in the first ten days of January, Rosstat reports. AI 92 is available for 33.42 RUR per liter, AI 95 for 35.76 RUR, and diesel fuel for 36.34 RUR. In fact, prices went down in thirty-five Russian federal constituencies between January 4 and January 10; the decrease was most pronounced in Kyzyl (-2.3%) and Ulan Ude (-1.1%). At the same time, gas prices also went up in Yaroslavl (+1.3%), Veliky Novgorod (+0.1%), and Nizhniy Novgorod (+0.1%).

January 18, 2016. Gazprom’s IAS-calculated net loss amounted to 2bn RUR sharp in the third quarter of 2015 (against 105.676bn RUR in profit a year earlier), Interfax reports. This figure was actually better than the Interfax panel forecast of 17.509bn RUR in losses. Uralsib proved to have made the closest informed guess at this. The company’s free cash flow is now back to positive (29bn RUR), its revenues are up by 14% (1.293 trillion RUR against the expected 1.286 trillion). Its EBITDA rose by 3%, up to 490.875bn RUR (against the expected 448bn RUR). The company lost 400.378bn RUR on

January 18, 2016. The share of Sverdlovsk Region’s residents’ income directed to loan repayments amounted to 25.95% at the end of 2015, National Bureau of Credit History reports. This monthly loan repayment/income ratio decreased by 0.95% compared with April 2015, whereas the country’s overall PTI dropped by as much as 3.91% (down to 26.91%) by the end of last year. The ratio declined most noticeably in the segment of borrowers with medium-sized incomes (by 4.1%); as for the smallest-income and largest-income segments, the figures went down by 3.99% and 3.44%, respectively. The debt burden

January 15, 2016. Yekaterinburg police officers detained a 27-year-old man from Beloyarsky who is suspected of real estate fraud. The spokesperson for the city police department says the suspect arrived in Yekaterinburg last September to rent a studio apartment in Shchors St for one day. He then immediately advertised the place online as a rental location available for a month. ‘Three different people called who were interested in the offer and decided to sign the rental contract. The suspect actually signed three deals in one day, getting 17,000 RUR 10,000 RUR, and 28,000 RUR from the first,

January 15, 2016. Russia’s international air travel market got 14% smaller last year, Finmarket refers to the Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov as saying. ‘This is the country’s average; in fact, the figure dropped to as much as 30%-40% to 50% in certain airports,’ the minister said. In the meantime, the domestic market turnover reached 93m passengers last year, Sokolov said, which was almost as much as in the year 2014 (93.181m passengers). According to the minister, last year’s share of domestic flights amounted to 55%-60% of the country’s entire air travel market.

January 15, 2016. Regional Airports Holding (a part of Renova Group) bought a 17.28% shareholding in Koltsovo International Airport from Sverdlovsk Region Government, thus becoming the owner of 87.04% of the airport’s shares. The transaction’s cost is reported to come to 1.259bn RUR. The controlling shareholding went to Regional Airports Management Company in early 2015; the 17.5% stake was sold for the opening bid of 1.259bn RUR. No other potential bidders had applied for the auction.

January 15, 2016. Sverdlovsk Region-based enterprises had to pay a total of 1.655m RUR in fines for selling defective children’s products, the local division of Rospotrebnadzor (the state consumer rights watchdog) reports. According to the division, 148 sellers of children’s products got inspected last year, with over 12,000 items examined altogether. The figure included 4,476 children’s games and toys. It was determined that 1,536 items (total worth 479,800 RUR, most of them from China), or 34.3% of all the children’s goods available for purchase, did not meet the existing legal selling

January 15, 2016. Yekaterinburg’s Koltsovo Airport (a member enterprise of Regional Airports Holding) offered its services to 4,247,541 passengers last year, which was 6% less than one year earlier. The airport’s press service reports the decrease in passenger traffic had to do with the considerably shrinking international air travel market. ‘Slightly over 1.5m passengers traveled abroad from Koltsovo last year, whereas in the previous year, the figure was 29% larger. At the same time, domestic flights turnover actually went up by nearly 14% in 2015 compared with 201 and came to 2,745,236

January 14, 2016. The number of Russian tourists spending their New Year break abroad dropped by 30% to 35% this year compared with early 2015, RIA Novosti refers to Executive Director of the Association of Russian Tour Operators Maia Lomidze as stating. ‘Despite a certain traffic surge for some destinations, outgoing tourism plummeted by an average of 30% to 35% against last year’s season in every market segmen,’ Lomidze said.

January 14, 2016. Inflation rate was registered at 12.9% in Russia last year, Rosstat reports. Among food items, the prices of sunflower oil, fish and seafood, pasta, and fruit and vegetables grew most dramatically, by 37.2%, 20.9%, 19.5%, and 17.4%, respectively. Among non-food items, prices of tobacco products, laundry detergents, textiles, and medicines rose the most, by 26.6%, 22.4%, 19.7%, and 19.6%, respectively. Housing bills increased by 10.1%, medical ones by 11.1%, and insurance services grew 20.5% costlier.

January 14, 2016. Ural Locomotives manufactured the record-setting 113 Sinara (2ES6) freight locos in 2015, the company press service reports. Sinara 2ES6 is one of the first Russian new-generation freight locos to be used by Russian Railways. A pilot sample was presented on December 1, 2006 and certified for serial-scale production in June 2008. Starting from this year, Sinara 2ES6 is used at Sverdlovsk Railways. The plant has made 561 locos altogether so far. Sinara is an innovative product: over 80% of all the technological solutions it took to produce it have never been used in Russian

January 14, 2016. 1,513 customer complaints relating to poor financial services were filed with Sverdlovsk Region division of Rospotrebnadzor (the state-run consumer rights watchdog) last year; this was 60% more than one year earlier. The agency reports this amounted to 15% of all customer complaints for last year. Now 78% of these specific complaints were related to banking services, 16% to insurance companies’ services, 3% to micro-financing organizations’ services, and 1% to agents’ services. The division carried out 128 inspections aimed to check financial organizations’ compliance with

January 14, 2016. Sverdlovsk Region Government keeps ignoring the increasing rate of suicides in many local towns. Psychiatrists say suicide rate is directly proportional to the local economic situation. Sverdlovsk Region’s Senior Psychiatrist Oleg Serdyuk says Yekaterinburg is one of the least affected cities. ‘Other towns, in the meanwhile, have a much higher suicide rate than others. I am talking about cases with actual lethal outcomes here. Economy is definitely a factor,’ Serdyuk said. ‘The social policies that crush the population influence the number of suicides directly,’ says head of

January 13, 2016. The cost of administering Sverdlovsk Region Government’s debt rose by 4.3 times compared with the year 2012. At the time, the debt servicing limit was set at 1,228,241,600 RUR, whereas the constituency’s budget for 2016 allocates as much as 5,568,091,400 RUR for the purpose. The constituency’s state debt amounted to 52bn RUR on December 1, 2016and could reach as much as 70bn RUR by the first of January.

January 13, 2016. The number of Russia’s officially unemployed went up by 1.9% in the last week of December 2015 and came to 993,100 people, Finmarket refers to the Russian Labor Ministry as stating. ‘The number of people officially registered as jobless rose by 1.9% between December 23 and December 29, 2015 and came to 993,104 people (974,946 people on December 23),’ the ministry says. It is reported the unemployment only decreased in twelve Russian constituencies in the said week. The number of jobless went up in seventy-one constituencies, with the unemployment rate up by over 1% in

January 13, 2016. Expert RA (RAEX) demoted Uralmashzavod’s rating down to B++ (Satisfactory), with Negative rating outlook. This change from Stable to Negative is reflexive of the increased likelihood of the rating going further down in the medium term, the agency explains. The plant used to be rated as A (High). ’The dropping rating had to do with the company’s funds (calculated in accordance with the Russian Accounting Standards) diminishing to a point below zero in the second quarter of 2015 and with the lack of any plan on the proprietor’s part to make the figure go up. The agency does

January 13, 2015. Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation’s head plant’s retired employees, members of the Golden Age Historical Club, were treated to a bus tour of the plant premises as a New Year present. The company press service reports the club has been around for seven years now, welcoming as its members the plant’s former employees, who dedicated a big part of their life to the company. Despite their advanced age, the club members are still active and energetic and meet on a monthly basis. Government deputies, public figures, musicians, museum workers, legal professionals and other experts

January 13, 2016. The overall amount of past-due loan repayments doubled in the course of last year and amounted to 45bn RUR, Deputy Head of the Federal Service of Court Officers’ Sverdlovsk Region division Elena Sidorova announced at a recent press conference. ‘We handled 119,500 debt enforcement cases in 2015 all in all, which was 11%, or 10,000 cases more than in the year 2014, whereas the overall debt amount went up by two times. Our court officers are currently working on 45bn RUR worth of enforcement cases, with only 4bn RUR collected so far,’ Sidorova said. She explained Sberbank was

January 12, 2016. Inflation rate was registered at 14% in Sverdlovsk Region in December 2015 against a year earlier and at 0.5% against November 2015, Sverdlovskstat reports. Food items grew 17.2% more expensive compared with December 2014 and 1.7% more expensive compared with November 2015; the price of strong drinks went up by 9% and 0%, respectively. Non-food items grew 0.3% more expensive compared with November 2015 and 14.3% more expensive compared with December 2014. The price of services dropped by 0.6% compared with November 2015 and rose by 10.9% compared with December 2014.