UrBC, Chelyabinsk, March 22, 2019. ChelPipe Group, Almetyevsk Vocational School, and Russia’s Defense Ministry signed an agreement to allow the alumni of Tatarstan’s College of the Future Corporate Training Program to serve their army terms in Mirny, Samara Region. the training program gets hosted by ChelPipe Group’s member enterprise Alnas. According to the Group’s press service, forty new recruits will serve their terms in the MoD’s Army 14 Air Force & Air Defense unit. The new agreement is yet another measure to comply with the Russian President Vladimir Putin’s commission to the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 22, 2019. A new school will get built in Yekaterinburg’s District Akademicheskiy soon, RSG-Akademicheskoye’s press service refers to Vice Mayor of Yekaterinburg Alexei Biryulin as saying. According to Biryulin, the school will get commissioned in 2020. The construction of the district’s fifth school is now under way in Blizky Quarter. In terms of design, furnishings, and appliances, this is going to become one of Yekaterinburg’s best schools. The children and teachers will get a stadium, a library/research center, and well-equipped classrooms. The school is expected

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 22, 2019. The digital opportunity company MegaFon announced it was prepared to invest in the Ural-based startups as part of the EKB Startup Day program on March 23, the telecom company’s press service reports. IT businesses are invited to join the EKB Startup Day conference coordinated by the Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF) with MegaFon’s support. Yeltsin Center will host the event for the tech market players, investors, venture angels, and corporations. The conference participants will be ale to look at the market leaders’s success cases and learn

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 22, 2019. One MegaFon customer used 10 Gb more traffic on average in the last quarter of 2018 compared with the last quarter of 2017 (+40%), the telecom company’s press service reports. Out of MegaFon’s 75 million customers, 28 million use the Internet connection on a 4G-supporting device. The company improved its connection quality and upgraded its services last year to create Russia’s largest mobile network. By early 2019, MegaFon operated nearly 223,000 base stations all in all, with over a third of them supporting LTE formats. MegaFon’s revenues also rose by

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 22, 2019. The Smart City Standard has been adopted in Russia, and Yekaterinburg’s District Akademicheskiy is going to serve as one of the testing grounds for the launch of the standard, the district developer KORTROS Group’s press service reports. The agreement to this effect got signed by KORTROS Group of Companies and Russia’s Construction Ministry. The Smart City Standard comprises the following: urban management, smart housing services and utilities, urban environment innovations, smart public transport, smart public and environmental safety systems,

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 21, 2019. EVRAZ Holding Ural’s member enterprises improved working conditions for 4,000 metallurgical workers and miners last year. The company directed more than RUB 900 million to job safety and industrial safety in 2018, EVRAZ Holding Ural’s Corporate Relations Center reports. EVRAZ Nizhny Tagil Metallurgical Plant (EVRAZ NTMK) had the interlocking system LOTO installed at six of its departments last year to make sure the equipment cannot get started accidentally during repairs. More than 700 personal-use gas sensors got purchased for twenty-four divisions at the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 21, 2019. Ural Airlines are currently holding special price offers for their domestic and international flights, the air carrier’s press service says. You can get up to 50% off on your purchase if you book your tickets online at www.uralairlines.com, on Ural Airlines mobile app, and at online agents’ websites on March 20-22 (and also if you book over the phone and at booking offices on March 23-25). The discounted flights will get operated between March 21 and May 31 and between September 1 and December 25, 2019. The special offer holds for the following flights

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 21, 2019. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development (UBRD) and InSales are going to coordinate a workshop on the future of today’s retail business in Yekaterinburg. Talks will be given by experts from the UBRD, InSales, Russian Post, CDEK, Mail.ru Group, EKAM, and other companies. The workshop will take place at Summit Business Center at 51 Vosmoye Marta St on March 28, 2019, the bank’s press service reports. Every workshop participant will have an opportunity to look at real-life cases of successful online businesses. For one, the bank’s Acquiring

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, March 21, 2019. UiPath, the developer of the leading Robotic Process Automation (RPA) platform, praised MMK Group’s achievements in the area, the plant’s press service reports. RPA DAY! Conference, coordinated by QIWI, was held in Moscow in early March; MMK Group’s IT division MMK-Informservis set up its RPA Skills & Innovations Center in July 2018 and launched its first robot at MMK in September 2018 already. ‘Judging by the global RPA experience, the technology is a highly efficient way to make a business undergo digital transformation, which is actually the basis of

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 21, 2019. MegaFon’s infrastructure sustained all the peak loads and performed as usual during the 2019 Winter Universiade in Krasnoyarsk. The company’s 4G connection was about 20 Mbps fast on average; Yenisey Stadium, with tits 279 Mbps, had the fastest traffic of all, the company’s press service reports. ‘Every one in twenty students from the Urals went to take part in the Krasnoyarsk event. These 2019 Winter Universiade games proved the most large-scale mobile social function in Siberia’s entire record of public events,’ the press service says. Every MegaFon Ural

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 20, 2019. Ural Airlines are offering their customers an opportunity to travel from Almaty to Prague, Paris, Rome, Tel Aviv, Kaliningrad, and Simferopol via Moscow Region’s Zhukovsky Airport, with as little time in-between the two flights as is convenient. According to the air carrier’s press service, Ural Airlines launched their Almaty-Zhukovsky flight at the end of last year, so there are now plenty of convenient connecting flights for Kazakhstan-based travelers to choose from. ‘The flights get scheduled very conveniently, so that you’ll hardly notice the wait or

UrBC, Moscow, March 20, 2019. This week, the Central Bank of Russia carried a report on the sectors of economy that were primarily responsible for creating demand for shadow banking services last year, the CBR’s press service reports. ‘The Bank of Russia’s assessment suggests that last year the bulk of such dubious transactions were carried out by construction sector companies (29%) and service firms (security, cleaning, advertising – 21%),’ the bank’s website states. The retail/wholesale trade sectors (industrial goods and commodities) carried out 16% of such transactions each. ‘The

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 20, 2019. Rosatom’s TVEL’s Novouralsk-based member enterprise CentroTech Scientific & Production Association recently introduced a newer, safer, and more energy-efficient technology for making negative electrodes for cadmium-nickel generators at the plant, Ural Electrochemical Combine’s press service reports. The plant originally started looking into new ways to make the electrodes in order to cut back on the cost of materials, enhance work safety, increase the production’s technological efficiency, and make the process less labor-intensive. It took the company

UrBC, Moscow, March 20, 2019. It has been proposed that the so-called ‘mortgage break’ should apply to existing loans as well: such was the suggestion added to the Russian Parliament’s lower chamber’s decree on adopting the bill in the first reading. ‘The State Duma’s Financial Market Committee is to look into the possibility of extending the amendments discussed in the draft bill to the mortgage agreements signed before the said bill has come into effect,’ the decree says. The bill is expected to get considered by the Parliament on March 21. The idea is to introduce a grace period (up to six

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 20, 2019. 1,118,091 people flew with Ural Airlines in the first two months of 2019, which exceeds the figures for one year earlier by 8%, the air carrier’s press service reports. 598,157 people flew on the airline’s domestic flights, 209,242 people traveled internationally, and 310,692 people flew to and from the CIS member states. The airline operated 8,143 flights in January and February 2019 (up 5% on the year 2018), including 4,327 domestic flights, 1,436 international flights, and 2,380 flights to and from the CIS member states. The air carrier’s passenger

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 19, 2019. 31.7% less new housing got commissioned in Sverdlovsk Region in January-February 2019 compared with one year earlier, Sverdlovskstat reports. 57,900 m2 of new housing got commissioned in January 2019, including 39,000 m2 worth of private houses. The figures for February 2019 came to 110,500 m2 and 73,500 m2, respectively. If one looks at the private housing construction sector alone, the decrease in the number of new homes and the amount of newly commissioned square meters went down by as much as 41.1%.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 19, 2019. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development’s Retail Product Director Evgeny Shitikov was among the winners of the all-Russian Russia’s Leaders Contest for managers; the names of the 104 winners got announced in Sochi on March 17, the bank’s press service reports. The local rounds of the competition took place in all of the country’s federal districts in January and February 2019; following these rounds, all the contestants had to implement the social projects they had presented. As a result, three hundred people made it to the final round, with 104

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 19, 2019. Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation’s Director-General Alexander Potapov admitted their innovative R1 tram might not be safe; the concept for the tram got developed at the plant a few years ago. ‘As a concept, the thing looks spectacular. As a tram, quite sadly, it doesn’t live up to the technological standards. In addition to the exterior parameters, there are the interior ones, which means production issues. Moreover, the tram leaves much to be desired in terms of safety characteristics: the front is skewed to make it look like the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 19, 2019. Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev confirmed the old-age/social security pension increase coefficient that will come into effect on April 1. The paper to this effect is now available on the official legal information portal. The inflation readjustment coefficient comes to 1.02 for social pensions starting April 1, 2019, the paper states. Now about four million Russians are currently receiving their social pensions. These pensions will go up 2% on April 1 and will thus amount to RUB 9,266 a month on average.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 19, 2019. Four Sverdlovsk Region’s forestries got audited for compliance with the anti-bribery legislation; the investigation revealed a number of offenses, Sverdlovsk Region’s public prosecution authorities’ press service reports. For one, the heads of local forestries in Verkhoturye, Kushva, Nizhniye Sergi, and Tura failed to inform their employer about the conflict of interests occasioned by them hiring their own family members. This is a violation of Article 10 of the Federal law No. 273-FZ On Combating Corruption (dated December 25, 2008). The prosecution