October 23, 2012. The first organizations meeting on the preparations for the International Arms Exhibition 2013 was held in Nizhniy Tagil, Sverdlovsk Region Government’s Press & Information Administration informed UrBC. ‘The exhibition has been scheduled for the second half of September 2013; however, to make sure everything is flawless, we have already started preparing for the big event. Next year’s exhibition will be very different in that it will be primarily coordinated by Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation. Nizhniy Tagil Institute of Metal Testing, which used to

October 23, 2012. The 6th Interregional Conference coordinated by the Railway Vehicle Manufacturers, a non-profit partnership, will take place in Yekaterinburg on November 1-2. The conference will be dedicated to Transport Machine-Building: Quality as the Guarantee of Russian Railway Vehicles’ Safety and Reliability, says Sinara Group’s PR Center. The conference will be chaired by the partnership’s President Valentin Gapanovitch. The event is supposed to be attended by the representatives of the federal authorities, Sverdlovsk Region Government, and Russian Railways and by heads of the

October 23, 2012. In the nine months of 2012, the amount of debt that is accounted for by Sverdlovsk Region tax inspectorates (including tax payments, fines, and tax penalties) went down by 2,241.1m RUR, or 7%, and came to 30,356.5m RUR on October 1, 2012. This figure includes 19,780.2m RUR (65%) of overdue tax payments (this is 480.9m RUR, or 2% lower than a year earlier) and 10,576.3m RUR (35%) of unpaid fines and tax penalties (this is 1,760.2m RUR, or 14%, lower than a year earlier), the press office of Sverdlovsk Region division of Russia’s Federal Tax Service reports. Since the

October 23, 2012. Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant (a member of Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation/UVZ) that won the auction to supply a new firefighting vehicle managed to manufacture and ship the product to customer over a limited time period, UVZ’s press service reports. The vehicle, fitted with all the devices, has been tested at the plant: it was used to clear up a strip of land with dense vegetation. Both the shrubs and the 40 cm-wide poplars were defeated by the B-10M bulldozer and its wedge-shaped shovel. The bulldozer is primarily meant for laying paths to the fire

October 23, 2012. Starting today, a money order via the Golden Crown system can be made at any of SKB-Bank’s offices. This is a money order system that does not require the user to set up a bank account and that operates over 32,000 terminals around Russia and the CIS. The Golden Crown money orders are fast and affordable, the bank’s press service reports. The system’s other peculiarity is that there is no need for a specific mailing address: the sender only needs to indicate the country and the city where the money is going, and the person who is to get the money can choose the most

October 22 Pellet boilers that have already been installed at the filtering facilities in Neivo-Rudyanka will soon be introduced in other Sverdlovsk Region towns where the heating is provided by Oblkommunenergo State Unitary Enterprise, the company’s PR Department informed UrBC. The new 0.15 megawatt pellet boiler was launched at the start of this year’s heating season to supply heat to the filtering facilities in the Village of Neivo-Rydyanka, Kirovgrad Municipality. According to experts, its first performance results made it obvious that the new equipment is very efficient, trouble-free in

October 22 The head office of Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation is about to complete its project on the launch of GLONASS solutions. The plant’s entire railway and automobile fleet of vehicles has been fitted with this navigation and positioning equipment. The project was designed and developed by M2M Telematika Group, and Asteros acted as the general contractor for the launch of this complex IT system. The system was designed in accordance with this machine-building company’s needs and in accordance with the specific vehicle operation here. Given that most of the haulage

October 22 Sinara Pipe Plant (a member of Pipe Metallurgical Company, TMK) is about to complete the installation of shot-blasting and sandblasting machines. These jobs are implemented within the framework of the company’s investment project targeted at the construction of an insulated lift pipe production unit at the company’s Pipe-Drawing Shop 3, TMK’s press service reports. These insulated lift pipes have enhanced heat-insulating characteristics and are peculiar in that they are actually assembled from two pipes, with the smaller one inserted in the larger one. The space between the two

October 22 Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court declared OOO VYSO-Interservice insolvent (bankrupt), the court’s website states. The company’s debt to creditors comes to 297,811,199.39 RUR. A member of Strategiya Interregional Self-Regulatory Organization of Trustees in Bankruptcy, a non-profit partnership, Ekaterina Yurkovskaya, was appointed the company’s trustee in bankruptcy.

October 22 The 6th Interregional Scientific/Practical Conference on Innovational Technologies, Defense Systems, Science, & Education was held in Omsk. All in all, over 450 Russian and foreign companies and scientific and educational establishments took part in the event. Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation was represented by Deputy DG for Special Vehicles Vyachelsav Khalitov, Director-General of Ural Transport Machine-Building Design Office Andrei Terlikov from Nizhniy Tagil, and Director-General of Transport Machine-Building Design Office from Omsk Igor Lobov. The

October 19 The Federal Housing Construction Facilitation Fund is coordinating an auction aimed at letting a land allotment in Sysert District, Sverdlovsk Region, with the total area of 43.3 hectares. The land allotment is meant for multi-faceted area development. The opening bid has been set at 5.54m RUR, every other bid has to be at least 200,000 RUR greater, the fund’s website states. The rental contract will be signed for seven years. The allotment allows for the construction of 41,000 sq m worth of housing, and 75% of the allotment is to be used for putting up low-rise economy class

October 19 The industrial production index for all the enterprises operating in Sverdlovsk Region in January-September 2012 exceeded the figures for January-September 2011 by 8.7%, the regional Economics Ministry reports. Compared with a year earlier, the actual industrial production volumes rose most in the machine-building and equipment manufacturing industry (+44.8%), in the chemicals industry (+42.3%), in the rubber and plastic goods industry (+22.6%), in the electronic and optical equipment industry (+18.7%), in the food manufacturing industry (including drinks and tobacco) (+15.1%), and

October 19 The current exchange rate of the national currency against the foreign ones influences the population’s trust in the ruble greatly, OOO Bank Koltso Urala’s press service refers to the bank’s experts as saying. ‘It’s obvious that, when the ruble is getting a bit stronger, the USD quotations are either dropping or remain the same, and the level of trust increases. When the ruble is getting weaker and the dollar is rising, the level of trust goes down. On the whole, the ruble looks not bad at all in the long term when compared with the dollar/euro combination – given especially the

October 19 The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development now runs a regular rubric on Yekaterinburg online portal called E1.ru. Any user can now learn about what unit investment funds are and about how they operate, get professional advice on shaping one’s portfolio, on risk calculation, and on choosing an investment strategy from the URBD’s two highly skilled experts: Head of the Finance & Investment Services Department Vladimir Zotov and the Investment Services Director Maxim Golubkov, the bank’s press office reports. This rubric also offers detailed information on the UBRD

October 19 Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation’s head office in Nizhniy Tagil completed its preparations for the winter. In 2012, nearly a billion RUR was spent on this, which is several times more than in the previous years. The company currently maintains over 700 buildings and structures, about 100km worth of highways, pavements, and other such objects (namely, railways, electric mains, and pipelines). All these facilities get prepared for their safe operation during the winter period every year. Most of such jobs are usually done in the summer. This year, the

October 18 Sverdlovsk Region is going to sell the shareholding it has in OAO Koltsovo Airport. The transaction is expected to amount to at least 2bn RUR. This intention was voiced at a recent government meeting when the program for public property management for 2013 was being considered. A 34.56% shareholding in the airport was handed over to Sverdlovsk Region in early February 2011. It was believed then that this transfer would help attract 32bn RUR worth of investments by 2030. The money was supposed to go to upgrading the airport infrastructure through state-private partnership. It was

October 18 Irbit Dairy Plant now has a new Director-General. The plant is now headed by Sergey Suyetin, Sverdlovsk Region Government’s Press Service & Information Administration reports. Evgeny Pilshchikov, who was the company’s Director for eighteen years, turned 74 and retired this year. Prior to accepting his new position, Suyetin ran Berezovsky Dairy Plant. Irbit Dairy Plant reorganized into a joint stock company in December 2011. The company’s only shareholder with a 100% holding is Sverdlovsk Region Government.

October 18 The technical plan of the AC electric freight locomotives with asynchronous traction was presented at Ural Locomotives (a JV run by Sinara Group and Siemens AG) in Verkhnyaya Pyshma. The freight locomotive is a two-section, 16-wheel loco with four bogies that can be used in many modifications, as the entire chain can be controlled synchronously from any foot-plate; the loco can also head the trains weighing up to 9,000 tons. The machine is fitted with a very advanced BLOC safety system as well as a microprocessor control system that has autopilot, diagnostics, data transfer,

October 18 The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development’s new company style and logo meet the purposes of the re-branding campaign that was launched on October 1, the bank’s customers feel. The research conducted on October 3-11 involved 146 respondents who stopped by the new branch opened at 55 Malyshev St, the bank’s press office reports. The respondents were asked to evaluate the bank along the following criteria: professionalism, technological aptitude, transparency, and quality of service. Those surveyed also voiced their opinion of the UBRD’s new image. 95% of respondents feel

October 18 60% of Russian citizens surveyed by the Public Opinion Fund said that out of all the currencies they trusted the Russian ruble most of all. 13% prefer the dollar, 11% feel that the euro is the safest choice, and 3% trust some other currency, SKB-Bank’s press service reports. The trust in the ruble fell against March 2012 when it was the highest throughout the entire period of the Fund’s monitoring it (69%). The Public Opinion Fund’s analysts observe that these are the retirees, people with secondary education or the less educated who trust the ruble most. The resource-rich groups