Experts from Sinara Pipe Plant (a member of Pipe Metallurgical Company (TMK)) took part in the international technical conference Metal 2012 on the premises of Byelorussian Metallurgical Palnt in Zhlobin, Byelorussia, TMK press service reports. Over 130 participants from different countries attended the conference. The Russian delegation comprises five young experts from Sinara Pipe Plant; they joined four out of the forum’s eleven sections and demonstrated a great level of project preparedness everywhere. At the end of the conference, a report on the methods of enhancing IT systems’

In the first half of the year, 21 legal entities performed foreign trade transactions in Yamalo-Nenetsk Customs area and filled out 508 cargo manifests (including 255 import ones and 253 export ones). A year earlier, 620 cargo manifests were filled out, including 295 import ones and 325 export ones, Ural Customs Administration’s press service reports. The foreign trade turnover came to $236.5m, with 85.4% of goods coming to or from the far abroad ($202.1m) and 14.6% of goods coming to or from the CIS ($34.4m) Imports amounted to 34.5% of the foreign trade turnover ($81.7m), while exports

According to the files of the case, Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court stopped the bankruptcy proceedings of OAO Pnevmostroymachine. The proceedings were stopped because the plant had come to an out-of-court settlement with its creditors. Now Pnevmostroymachine submitted an insolvency application to the court itself in the fall of 2009. There are 76 legal entities on the creditors’ list, with their claims amounting to a total of 2.17bn RUR.

The Italian authorites haven’t yet responded to the query regarding the seizure of Alexei Kalinichenko’s Italian assets; the man is accused of fraud involving his investors’ money, Interfax-Ural reports. ‘We were able to obtain data on some bank accounts and some real estate (a twenty-room mansion and a villa in Italy and some other buildings). However, the extradition of assets is more complicated than that of the accused,’ Head of the Investigative Department of the Internal Affairs Ministry Main Administration in Ural Federal District Andrei Taranenko reports. According to Taranenko, since

The business centers Suvorov and President in downtown Yekaterinburg will be commissioned this year, Yekaterinburg Council’s press service reports. This means the original launch date was put off by three years. The construction of Suvorov, located at 6/1 Radischev St, began as early as 2007 (the original name of the center was The Count Orloff). The center was supposed to have been launched as early as 2009, but all the jobs had to be halted a number of times, and the construction process stopped. As a result, The Count Orloff is only about to be launched now. President Business Center, a

Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation completed the tests of its Chelyabinsk T-10m tractor fitted with a bush-cutting device for clearing the forests off bushes and young offshoots coming to up to 120mm, Uralvagonzavod’s press service reports. The unit, which looks like a bulldozer with an impressive wedge-shaped shovel with blades, was tested at Sofrino, Pushkinksy District, on the premises of TsentrLes, the federal agency in charge of controlling fires in Moscow Region. The performance of the tractor was assessed by an ad hoc intergovernmental committee comprising Professor

A quarter of Sverdlovsk Region dwellers submit ‘blank’ tax declarations, Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Evgeny Kuivashev said at the regional social security council’s meeting. ‘First of all, more and more taxpayers are now submitting ‘blank’ tax declarations. In 2011, they made up about 26% of all the registered legal entities. Also, the number of loss-making organizations is also big enough. As for the taxes paid to municipalities, there are some problems there as well: the land tax debt keeps on growing and comes to over 707m RUR now,’ Kuivashev said. In fact, over 11,000 land allotments

Head of Russian Government Dmitri Medvedev signed a decree on the construction of a large seaport in Sabetta, Yamal Peninsula, Oblastnaya Gazeta reports. In addition to the infrastructure necessary to transport the mineral resources, the port will also have some facilities for handling shipments from Sverdlovsk Region. In 2012-2016, 47.2bn RUR will be allocated from the federal budget and 25.9bn RUR will come from the non-budgetary funds to put up these facilities. Following the launch of the Northern Line (Salekhard-Nadym railway link), the Ural Region will have an access to the sea. ‘Our

An agreement on the transfer of management authority over the special economic zone located next to Verkhnyaya Salda from the Russian Economic Development Ministry to OAO Titanium Valley Special Economic Zone was signed in Moscow. The signing of the agreement resulted from the changes made in the Russian law: on January 1, 2012, the amendments to the special economic zones legislation came into effect and made it obligatory for the management companies to assume more power and perform more functions. The agreement was signed by Deputy Minister Oleg Savelyev on behalf of the Russian Economic

Cyprus is opening three new consulates-general in the Russian Federation because increasingly more Russians are traveling to the island, Interfax-Tourism reports. ‘We do confirm that three consulates-general will soon start operating in Yekaterinburg, Krasnodar, and Samara so as to service the Russian travelers going to Cyprus,’ Cyprus’s Foreign Affairs Minister Erato Kozakou-Markoulis said at a briefing in Moscow after talks with her Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on Wednesday. She noted that Cyprus considered the Russian market to be the second most important one in terms of tourism, as

Jozef Pavleye (www.pavleye.com) founder of Pavleye Art and Culture (www.pavleyeartandculture.com), answers UralBusinessConsulting Agency for information & Analytics’ questions. — How popular is the institution of a photographer’s agent in the Czech Republic? — Fifteen years ago, when we just started on photography, there were about fifteen professional photographers in the Czech Republic. They mainly did advertising and fashion projects then. Now there are about a hundred of them around, which is quite a lot for Prague: it is, after all, a small town. There are only about three or four

The housing construction in Sverdlovsk Region will only come to 75% of the target figures for the year 2012, the region’s Construction & Infrastructure Development Minister Sergey Fedorov said at a government meeting today. ‘370,000 sq m of housing was commissioned in the first half of the year. 1.6m sq m more is expected to be launched before the end of the year, but this only comes to 76% of the target 2,100,000 sq m,’ Fedorov said. Now in 2011, 1.817m sq m of housing was commissioned in Sverdlovsk Region.

Roskomnadzor published the GSM 900-1800 mobile telecommunications coverage maps of Ural Federal District; the data are based on the licenses the mobile carriers currently hold. Kurgan, Chelyabinsk, and Sverdlovsk Region have the best coverage figures (89.3%, 74.6%, and 69.8%, respectively), while Khanty-Mansiysky Autonomous Region has the worst coverage (56%). MegaFon offers access to mobile communication in 76.5% of Ural Federal District’s territory; the figures for MTS and Vympelcom come to 68.8% and 55.1%, respectively. Tele2, which only operates in Chelyabinsk Region, covers 12.3% of the

Experts from the Delovoy Kvartal magazine’s analytical team came up with a top list of Yekaterinburg’s most influential people. The leaders were selected along eight categories: Finance, Construction & Development, Industry & Production, Retail, Business Services, Car Business, IT, and Logistics, SKB-Bank reports. SKB-Bank Chairman of the Supervisory Board Vladimir Pukhov was declared the most influential person in the local finances. The analysts behind the rating observe that his main achievement consists in making SKB-Bank’s net assets exceed 100bn RUR in 2011 and in getting the

The stock-taking procedure at UIC Bank revealed that the bank had a cash shortage of about 138.2m RUR, the Russian Agency for Legal & Court Information reports after getting access to ASV’s papers. The bank’s trustee in bankruptcy says the shortage mainly stems from the ‘other assets’ category. Following the bankruptcy proceedings, the trustee in bankruptcy placed 41 claims amounting to a total of 505.7m RUR with the courts. 13 claims amounting to 129.7m RUR were sustained. The trustee in bankruptcy also detected a number of transactions that can be classed as invalid in accordance with

In the first half of 2012, NLMK-Sort’s enterprises sold 660,000 tons of reinforcing bars (4% better than a year earlier), 139,000 tons of metal goods (14% better than a year earlier), and 62,000 tons of rolled wire (26% less than a year earlier). All in all, 863,000 tons of metal goods were sold, which was 6% less than in the first half of 2011, the press service of NLMK Yekaterinburg subsidiary NLMK-Ural reports. ‘The decrease in the general amount of sales has to do with our giving up on the financially inexpedient shipments of semi-finished products and rolled wire abroad,’ the company

Nine pipe-layers and some bulldozer machinery manufactured at Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant-Uraltrac have been sent to Sudan. The contract signed with one of the African country’s construction companies has been fully completed within one and a half months. The pipe-layers will be used for building oil pipelines in Sudan. All of the vehicles come in their tropical climate-suited modifications and have a tonnage of 27 tons. A few years ago, the machine-builders from the South Urals already sent a number of bulldozers to this developing country. The current contract with Sudan means the vehicles

Sverdlovsk Region public prosecution authorities for the environment looked into Uralasbest’s compliance with the environmental legislation. The inspection revealed some grave violations of the environmental legislation, including the law on atmospheric air protection, production and consumption waste treatment, sanitary-epidemiological regulations, and water use regulations, the spokesperson for the authorities reports. The current sanitary legislation states that the sanitary protection zone should come to 1,000 meters for an enterprise like Uralasbest (Class 1 Hazard). The size and the

Yekaterinburg Electrical Network Company came up with a performance report for the first half of 2012. The power consumption within the company’s network came to 2961.99m kilowatt-hours in January-June, which was 6.8% more than in 2010 and 3.9% more than in 2011. On average, it took 1.2 hours to fix a technological problem, the company’s press service reports. The company implemented all the projects in preparations for the river floods and the storm season and all the preventive jobs for the repairs of relay protection and automatic equipment. In the first half of 2012, Yekaterinburg

Russia’s Economic Development Ministry’s Expert Council approved of the projects proposed by two more potential residents of Titanium Valley – Ural Optical Plant and Stroydiesel Composite. ‘All the projects in the first section of the special economic zone in the Mid-Urals have been nearly completed by now. Out of 72 hectares of land, only 10 are available now,’ says Titanium Valley Special Economic Zone’s Director-General Artemy Kyzlasov. So far, four agreements of intent have been signed, and business plans have been prepared for the expert council’s next meeting. Also, agreements to set up