Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin allocated 1 million RUR from the region’s budget to the town of Miass. The spokesperson for the Governor reports the better part of money (625,500 RUR) is to be directed to local schools. Miass School No. 1 that will celebrate its 110th anniversary next year is going to receive 198,000 RUR worth of new armchairs for the assembly hall. School No. 36 located in Syrostan settlement will have got an extension by the end of winter. 70,000 RUR will be spent on the finishing jobs, installation of windows, and buying a new hot-water generator and a pumping

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin held a meeting on the problems of local mining towns and the prospects of the region’s coal mining industry. The meeting was attended by First Deputy Governor Vladimir Dyatlov, mayors of Kopeisk, Korkino, and Yemanzhelinsk, and General Director of Chelyabinsk Coal Company Konstantin Strukov. The agenda of the meeting contained issues related to the socioeconomic situation in the local mining towns and to the performance of Chelyabinsk Coal Company. Governor Sumin was mainly interested in the unemployment rates and the efficiency of measures taken to

‘We first considered building a third extension to Greenwich Trade & Entertainment Center three and a half years ago. A year later, the construction process began. About 2.5 million RUR has been spent on the new building, of which about 40% came from our own funds, while the rest was borrowed from Raiffeisen-Bank. Remarkably, once the recession has kicked in, we actually started paying less on this loan, as our interest rate was LIBOR-dependent,’ the co-founder of 73 Malyshev St Society Igor Zavodovskiy said at a press conference devoted to the opening of Greenwich Trade &

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court began considering the claim laid by Bank VTB’s Yekaterinburg subsidiary against Rostransavto. The plaintiff demands that the defendant be declared bankrupt. The bank insists that Rostransavto is unable to meet its creditors’ claims, as its debts outstrip the cost of its assets. Rostransavto is a large business dealing in the supplies of road construction appliances, freight vehicles, communal housing services and warehouse machinery, and spare parts to the customers based in the Urals and Siberia. The company is also the official dealer of TK Kommash,

Polaris chain stores located at 99 Lenin St and 8d Vosmoye Marta St in Yekaterinburg recently closed down. Nevertheless, the company still provides its earlier customers with warranty services locally. The country-wide computer chain store was founded in 1998 and comprised over fifty outlets in various Russian regions. The company’s core business activity was focused on the retail sales.

‘We have already signed sixty-one rental contracts, which covers 100% of Alatyr Mall shopping area. However, our tenants did not expect us to open the mall on time, so most of them are still unprepared to move in their new stores. Adidas, for example, is not going to start working before New Year,’ head of TEN Development Management Company and project investor Sergey Trofimov announced at a press briefing in Yekaterinburg. The briefing was dedicated to the recent launch of Alatyr Mall. ‘We are planning to open 61% of shops in January; by February, the figure will have risen to 80%, and by

Bank VTB’s Yekaterinburg branch placed its application with Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court, asking that Gora Volchikha Ski Resort be declared bankrupt. The bank originally laid a claim against Mikhailov Enterprise and Gora Volchikha Ski Resort as early as in the summer of 2009. The bank then insisted on being paid 63.52 million RUR. The court agreed to have the defendant’s mortgaged property – the artificial snow-making equipment and four lifting devices – arrested and forbade Mikhailov Enterprise, RevdaDorStroy, and other parties to take any action aimed at alienation of disputed assets.

The rating agency affirmed Sverdlovsk Region’s long-term credit rating at BB, with Stable Rating Outlook, the spokesperson for Sverdlovsk Region Ministry for Economics and Labor reports. Standard & Poor’s said the regional ratings can’t grow further because of the deeply felt economic recession which, in combination with limited flexibility and predictability of the budget indicators, leads to a currently weakened regional budget balance. What is more, the metallurgical and pipe-manufacturing enterprises comprise the lion’s share of the regional economy, which makes Sverdlovsk Region

Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government Anatoly Gredin met the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Turkey to Russia Halil Akinci, Sverdlovsk Region Government’s press center reports. ‘The Turkish companies keep taking part in the construction projects in the mid-Urals, contributing to a number of large-scale projects. For one, the Turkish Korai helped put up Metro Cash & Carry. The Turkish builders will also assist in the implementation of Olympus Mall project; this mall will be put up on the highway connecting Yekaterinburg to Koltsovo Airport. The twenty-hectare

Former Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel was appointed Member of the Russian Federation Soviet of the Federation’s Upper Chamber on Wednesday, RIA Novosti reports. Eduard Rossel’s authority as the Senator of Sverdlovsk Region’s executive branch was confirmed by the majority of the Soviet votes. The former Governor is going to succeed Alexander Shkolnik in this position.

Sverdlovsk Region division of the Russian Federation Ministry of Emergencies received a phone call regarding a fire in Alatyr shopping mall in the morning of December 16, 2009. Several fire brigades headed for the mall at once. ‘The firemen found out that a short-circuit failure occurred in the building, but luckily no fire broke out,’ the spokesperson for Sverdlovsk Region division of the Russian Federation Ministry of Emergencies said to UrBC. In fact, the official opening ceremony of Alatyr has been scheduled for Thursday. The mall management is going to hold a press briefing on Wednesday

The Republic of Cyprus is going to set up three consulates in Russia very soon, Chairman of Cyprus Tourism Organization Alekos Orundiotis informed the reporters. ‘The additional consulates will soon start working in Yekaterinburg, Krasnodar, and Samara. It is now only the matter of some technicalities on the Russian part,’ RIA Novosti quoted Orundiotis as saying. The executive reported 180,000 Russian tourists visited the island in 2008, although the figure dropped the following year due to economic recession and the devaluation of the ruble. Orundiotis says Russia is the third largest

The 9th Ural Investment Forum devoted to the year-long recession and its developmental potential began in Chelyabinsk. The event was attended by some foreign business executives, the legislative and executive branch officials, representatives of Ural Federal District’s constituencies, heads of regional industrial enterprises, banks, financial companies, and SMEs, and mayors of Chelyabinsk Region-based towns. The forum began with the opening speech by Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin. ‘The forum has already become a traditional event and a good meeting place for networking, sharing

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin held a meeting with the investors participating in the 9th Ural Investment Forum. The Governor noted that despite the economic hardships the local investors were not going to back out of their plans, even though some of the projects had to be delayed. The previous year’s forum, for example, resulted in 107 agreements (worth $14bn or 400 billion RUR) that were signed by investors, the regional government, and the local municipalities. Of these 107 projects, twenty have already been implemented successfully, while the rest are still in progress. Petr

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin sent an official letter to the Russian Federation Agriculture Minister Elena Skrynnik, asking her to change the official procedure of crop trading in the country. This year, the Russian Federation Government decided to buy out crops from a number of Russian farms, including sixty Chelyabinsk Region-based ones that had been accredited to take part in the trading process. According to the spokesperson for the Governor, only 9,000 tons of wheat crops have been sold through the Ural Stock Market since November 2, 2009 when the trading started. Even though

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court keeps looking into the claim laid by Legion Commercial Bank against Uralvagonzavod Federal State Unitary Enterprise. The plaintiff demands to be paid 10 million RUR. The bank took the case to court in order to get the 10-million-ruble payment on the promissory note UVZ № 0000254 as of August 23, 2006. The plaintiff provided the court with the original of the note in the course of the preliminary hearing. Uralvagonzavod refuses to meet the creditor’s demands: the company claims in its response that the plaintiff is not, in fact, a legitimate promissory note

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court supported the ruling of Sverdlovsk Region division of Rospotrebnadzor (the consumer rights watchdog). The division insisted that Uraltransbank face administrative liability. It is believed that the bank’s repair and construction agreements contained some terms that infringed upon the consumers’ legal rights, so the bank therefore violated the consumer rights protection laws. For one, when a customer takes out a loan needed for these repairs and construction, the bank makes them pay an incidental commission for the management of the loan and a monthly

President of the Republic of Byelorussia Alexander Lukashenko met Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin in the course of Chelyabinsk Region officials’ visit to Byelorussia. According to the spokesperson for the Governor, Alexander Lukashenko and Petr Sumin spoke about the main directions of and the new ways of the two territories’ trade and economic cooperation. President Lukashenko drew his interlocutor’s attention to the fact that both Russia and Byelorussia were faced with the formidable challenge of establishing a new type of confederacy which was expected to improve the two

‘As far as the building at 3 Vysotskiy St. in Yekaterinburg is concerned, UKS-Invest was the customer for the project and Avtofrans was the investor. The construction was completed in the middle of 2008, but a few problems were revealed during the commissioning process. These problems still haven’t been eliminated,’ Avtofrans court representative Valeria Chicherina said to UrBC. Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court conducted a hearing of the claim laid by UKS-Invest against Avtofrans and Avtoprodiks on December 14, 2009. The plaintiff demands that their deal be declared invalid and that the

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin met the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Hungary to Russia Georg Gilian. The Ambassador’s visit to the Urals had to do with the opening of the Hungarian Office in Yekaterinburg. This is a cultural and information agency designed to gradually become one of the major contributors to the two nations’ international cooperation and co-adaptation. Alexander Misharin suggested looking into a number of possible joint projects, particularly the ones that would benefit the social field. These projects are related to road construction (for