May 28, 2015. Uralvagonzavod Corporation (UVZ) is considering working with Egyptian companies on new rolling stock, road-building equipment, and oil and gas equipment, the Russian company’s DG Oleg Sienko said at Trade/Industrial Dialogue: Russia and Egypt in Cairo. According to the corporation’s press service, Sienko took part in bilateral meetings and talks, including the ones with Egypt’s defense and transport ministers. He also made a report at the plenary session on Russian-Egyptian business cooperation and new prospects and options in the field. In his report, Sienko said a new stage

May 28, 2015. The owners of three fast food restaurants operating as Subway franchisees are now offering their cafes for sale via Avito.ru advertisements. One of the places is located in downtown Yekaterinburg and is 115 m2 big. The restaurant is said to be ‘successfully operating’ for six months. ‘The restaurant is conveniently situated in the increased pedestrian traffic area, with no rival services in sight,’ the ad states. The owner does not quote the asking price for the business or its exact location. Another Subway outlet is in Uralmash District and is 125 m2 big. The owner’s starting

May 28, 2015. Some 35% of Yekaterinburg drivers with fines fail to pay them, the city’s road police report. According to the police data, 199,963 fines (totaling to 154,396,200 RUR) were issued to Yekaterinburg drivers in the four months of 2015. 99,562,700 RUR worth of fines, or 64.5%, were paid. 431 offenders had to face administrative liability for non-payment of fines, with charges based on Article 20.25 (Part 1) of the Russian Federation Administrative Offense Code. ‘Failure to pay a fine in time or in full is an offense that results in administrative liability. Besides, the Federal

May 28, 2015. Yekaterinburg urban development services are going to replace or renovate a number of road safety barriers in time for the summer season, the city council’s press service reports. Around 20km worth of crash barriers are to be washed and repainted. Additionally, over 1km worth of new barriers will be installed in the city’s Oktyabrsky District in order to prevent cars from parking onto the lawns and to ensure pedestrians’ safety.

May 28, 2015. Home Credit Bank’s employee count went down by 34% in the first quarter of 2015, which means there are currently 20,600 people working for the bank against 31,300 people last year, Banki.ru reports. The bank explains the cuts have to do with the need to narrow the network as their business is shrinking. According to the bank’s accounting report, its retail loan book dropped by 10%, down to 217bn RUR, in Q1’15, and by another 3%, down to 210bn RUR, in April. Home Credit Bank also switched to using Taxi-Credit, a courier delivery service, to cut back on expenses and increase the

May 27, 2015. Uralcryomash (a member enterprise of Uralvagonzavod Corporation) manufactured and shipped equipment for the refueling station at Vostochny space launch site. According to the corporation’s press service, this state contract on the production of a launch set and other units for Soyuz 2 is backed up by the Russian Federation Government’s special provision. ‘Uralcryomash designers are currently doing all the assembly supervision jobs: these have to be completed by May 30. Their job is then to ensure start-up and commissioning through September 30. This stage will be followed by

May 27, 2015. Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant/ChTPZ sanitary and environmental control lab is now on the federal Rosaccreditation list; every industrial lab must undergo such certification in order to operate. According to the plant’s press service, the new license with no expiration date allows the company to conduct environmental tests independently, whereas in the past, ChTPZ used to have to get temporary permits for every type of analysis, some of which had to be done with the help of external bodies. The lab experts are now fully independent in a wide range of measuring operations and

May 27, 2015. Private individuals’ overdue loan payments came to 7.8m RUR in Sverdlovsk Region recently, which was 18% more than at the start of the year, Central Bank reports. The figure came to 6.6m RUR in January, to 7.1m RUR in February, and to 7.6m RUR in March. As for overdue payments in foreign currency, this has been noticeably on the decrease and down from $62,900 in January to $24,700 in April.

May 27, 2015. The volume of motor freight transportation within Sverdlovsk Region dropped by 13.6% in January-April 2015, down to 9,400,000,000 kg, compared with the first four months of 2014, Sverdlovskstat reports. At the same time, the volume went up by 12.7% (969,600,000) in terms of ton-kilometers. ‘If the figures go down in terms of kilos yet go up in terms of ton-kilometers, this means less cargo gets transferred to more remote destinations. Figuratively speaking, we used to pick up our shipments in Moscow, now we pick them up in Belarus. The increase in the average traveling distance

May 27, 2015. 75 bank branches closed down in Sverdlovsk Region since the start of the year, Central Bank reports. There used to be 1,237 outlets in the area as recently as January, and only 1,162 still operated in April, offering a variety of banking services. For one, Svyasnoy-Bank and Baltiysky Bank closed their Yekaterinburg offices in January due to the need to get rid of ‘weak links’. It was later reported that Nordea Bank also decided to close down its branches outside Moscow and Saint Petersburg. In April, one of Uralprivatbank’s offices was closed. VTB and Sberbank announced they

May 26, 2015. The State Duma deputies met with members of Carriage-Builder’s Union, a non-profit partnership, to consider the current acute problems of Russian railway carriage-builders, Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s press service reports. The main factors behind the industry’s crisis are shrinking railway shipments and the fact that worn-out carriages are still used well past their write-off date. ‘It’s time this problem got government’s attention and proposals were drawn up for regulatory bodies and enterprises so that the carriage-building industry could both survive and keep on

May 26, 2015. Mashinostroitel, Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s newspaper, coordinated the 73d track-and-field relay race in Nizhniy Tagil. Prizes were provided by the corporation’s head plant. According to UVZ Corporation’s press service, this year’s race celebrated the 70th Victory Day, so war veterans and home front workers as well as sports veterans from Sputnik Club were invited to watch the event as guests of honor. ‘The plant’s management has been supporting and promoting sports and a healthy lifestyle among the workers and their families for many years now. This year, workers from

May 26, 2015. Trubnik.Lyudi.Sobytiya.Kommentarii, ChTPZ Group’s company newspaper, won in the Best In-Company Media 2015 Contest as the Best Printed Media/Company Newspaper, the Group’s press service reports. The newspaper is the successor of ChTPZ Group’s Chelyabinsky Trubnik, founded in 1951. This company newspaper is now distributed at all of the Group’s member enterprises on a weekly basis free of charge. The paper is available in both printed and electronic formats in Chelyabinsk, Pervouralsk, Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Samara, and ten other Russian cities. ‘Our newspaper keeps on

May 26, 2015. Students of ChTPZ Group Training Center won a full set of prize medals at the 3d All-Russian WorldSkills 2015 championship, the Group’s press service reports. Gold in Mechatronics went to fourth-year students of Pervouralsk Metallurgical School on the Group’s Future of White Metallurgy Corporate Training Program Ilya Ivanov and Alexander Pauls. Nikolay Vinogradov, the school’s second-year student, won the silver medal in Industrial Automation, while the corporate program’s alumnus and employee of ChTPZ Group’s Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant Anton Shalakhov got the bronze one in

May 26, 2015. According to Sverdlovsk Region Government’s draft proposal, the living wage in the area is to go up by 15% and amount to 9,959 RUR a month in the third quarter of 2015. The monthly cost of living is estimated at 10,604 RUR for working-age citizens, at 8,194 RUR for retirees, and at 10,249 RUR for children. The wage adjustments have to do with growing prices, as the cost of living is calculated on the basis of how much a market basket costs according to statistical bodies’ data.

May 25, 2015. Omsktransmash (a member enterprise of Uralvagonzavod Corporation) took a set of accident- and injury-preventing measures that halved the number of injuries at work in the first quarter of the year, the company’s press service reports. ‘There were six injuries (five of them minor) at the plant in the first three months of the year. This is, in percentage terms, two times less than a year earlier,’ the press service says. Most of the injuries are typically related to workers’ negligence and deliberate violation of safety rules. Those who get injured tend to fall in the 35-plus age

May 25, 2015. ChTZ Uraltrac (a member enterprise of Uralvagonzavod Corporation) is about to r-launch its NC machines IR1250 that have been given an overhaul. According to the corporation’s press service, the machines got a new operating system and drivers. One of the machines will be used at the motor department for treatment of large motor parts. This is a high-precision machine, so the support mount is being made very carefully. The other unit will head for the welding department, where the first steering clutch casing will be made as soon as in May. ‘The plant expects to increase its

May 25, 2015. Bank Koltso Urala’s analysts report the demand for loan refinancing went up in the second quarter of 2015, the bank’s press service says. According to the bank’s Standard Loan Products Director Natalya Golubeva, now as customers keep trying to cut down on their expenses the trend for merging several expensive loans from different banks (credit cards, car loans, consumer loans, etc) into one continues. ‘Bank Koltso Urala started refinancing other banks’ loans relatively recently, but we can already do a statistical analysis of a typical customer for the service. These people are

May 25, 2015. 985,600 m2 worth of new housing got commissioned in Sverdlovsk Region in January-April 2015, Sverdlovskstat reports. 551,400 m2 (55.9%) pertain to private construction; this figure is twice as big as the one registered last year.

May 25, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region division of Rospotrebadzor (the state consumer rights watchdog) examined 226 items of furniture sold locally. It was determined that 81 items (35.8% of the total amount) were not sold properly in terms of trading legislation, the division’s press service reports. Mainly, trading regulations were violated in that no documents could be provided to prove that the item on sale met all the standards; in some cases, furniture items were sold without labels, without price tags, and without any necessary and accurate information. Besides, sellers’ purchase and sale