According to the Bank of Russia, natural persons and sole traders owe more than 2.921 trillion RUR to Russian banks (as of April 1, 2007). Most loan payments come from the Central Federal District (over 903 million RUR), the Volga Region (527,668,512 RUR), and Ural Federal District (361.356 million RUR). According to the Central Bank of Russia, most of these payments are related to ruble rather than foreign currency loans; the respective sums come to 2,000,378,821,000 RUR and 542,658,000 RUR. As regards Ural Federal District, Sverdlovsk Region-based debtors owe regional banks 108,932,000 RUR,

The average wage of a Sverdlovsk Region-based metallurgist went up by 19% last year compared to 2005 and reached more than 14,000 RUR; this is 24% better than the average regional salary, Sverdlovsk Region Union of Mining and Metallurgical Enterprises reports. The total amount of social welfare expenses in the field (including the wage fund and financing the collective agreements liabilities and 2 billion RUR spend on healthcare) rose by 18 billion RUR and amounted to nearly 38 billion RUR.

Consumers owe more than 249.12 million RUR to IES Multiutilities; the enterprise has failed to collect the debts out of court, so the local courts are processing about 2,264 claims laid by the company against its debtors at the moment. All in all, there were 3,234 claims against the company’s clients worth 246,975,000 RUR altogether in the first quarter of 2007; the claims largely had to do with unpaid housing bills.

Ural farmers have sown 341,700 hectares of land so far, which comes to 8.1% of the planned area. In addition, 262,600 hectares were sown with spring crops and leguminous plants, 987,300 hectares were sown with corn; this is 309,000 hectares better than a year earlier. This year, the sowing season started a little earlier in most Russian regions compared to 2006. According to the Federal Statistics Service, the country’s farmers sowed 7.6 million hectares as of May 1, 2007, including 4.7 million hectares of crops. 20% more spring crops (96% of which were sown in the Central, Volga, and South

Sverdlovsk Region Union of Mining and Metallurgical Enterprises held an annual meeting where the regional metallurgical enterprises were announced to have increased their sales by one-third last year; the figure reached over 400 billion RUR. This rise in sales was experienced by almost all metallurgical companies in the region.

According to Yekaterinburg Commodities Market Committee, six new shopping malls and trade and entertainment centers will be put up in Yekaterinburg in 2007. These will include 15,000-square-meter Gulliver furniture store at 38e Sibirskiy Tract, 42,000-square-meter Megapolis trade and entertainment center in the south of Yekaterinburg, and Rock-n-Mall trade and entertainment center at 2 Sibirskiy Tract-2 (a relief road) whose area will come to 62,000 square meters. In addition, a nine-storey trade and office building is to be constructed at Malyshev-Voyevodin St. by TEN Ltd., and a

Severnaya Kazna placed its balance-sheet as of May 1, 2007 on the bank’s corporate website. The paper states that the volume of the bank’s finances amounted to 757,443,000 RUR, which is 301,562,000 RUR, or 28% less than on January 1, 2007.

United Company RUSAL and HydroOGK started the construction of Boguchanskiy aluminum plant; the future facility will be capable of producing 600,000 tons of aluminum a year and is going to hit Russia’s top five largest aluminum plants. The project requires over $2.3 billion worth of investments. The plant is expected to be launched in December 2009 and to reach its full capacity in the second quarter of 2011. According to the two companies’ press release, the new plant will be part of a large Boguchanskiy power engineering and metallurgical enterprise comprising an electrolysis shop, a

SKB-Bank set up a mortgage lending center in Chelyabinsk, located conveniently at 30 Lenin Ave. The new center offers a potential borrower a great chance to have his or her questions answered all in one place as well as to save time needed for a bank to consider giving someone a loan and then hand over the money. ‘Taking out a mortgage from SKB-Bank is easy, which can be proved by our performance (smooth and accurate even in terms of the tiniest details) and our loan-giving procedures (which are simple, quick, and very clear). Thousands of our customers are living in their new apartments

‘The possibility of Russian airplanes being prohibited to fly over India will definitely affect our travel agents quite badly. Moscow-based firms will be having a particularly hard time, as the influx of tourists from the capital willing to go to India keeps growing every season,’ Tourism Director of Sputnik Marina Bondar said to UrBC. ‘We are not planning to do any summer tours to India since this season happens to be very hot and humid in this country, so the potential ban is not likely to affect our company in the nearest future,’ she said. The issue was brought about by head of Indian

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by Uralfinprombank to natural persons for 91 to 180 days went down 99% (from 4.311 million RUR to 30,000 RUR) in January-April 2007.

URSA Bank went for a public offering of ?400 million worth of three-year Eurobonds with an interest rate of 7% a year; the issue’s lead managers are ABN Amro and Deutsche Bank. ‘This offering is different from the other Russian banks’ Eurobond issues in that it gives good diversification opportunities; this why the bank managed to find some serious investors,’ Deutsche Bank says. URSA Bank intends to spend the finances obtained through the bond issue on developing loans to businesses, the bank’s press officer reports.

Ural division of Sberbank of Russia held a press briefing with INVEST United Financial Group executives speaking on the trends and challenges of Russian investment funds on May 15, 2007. ‘Sverdlovsk Region’s investment funds market, as well as that of Yekaterinburg in particular, is very promising. There are, for instance, quite a few federal players and a lot of local companies. We used to have only one Yekaterinburg-based partner in 2002, but this is not the case now. Sverdlovsk Region has a lot of potential in terms of both retail and business markets,’ SKB-Bank’s Securities Director Ilya

‘The Bank of Russia set the dollar/ruble and the euro/ruble exchange rates at 25.79 RUR per dollar and at 34.93 RUR per euro on May 16, 2007. This recent restoration of the euro was mainly due to bad retail sales in the U.S. that turned out to be worse than had been expected; the same was true of producer price index,’ SKB-Bank’s trader Sergey Vetyshev says. ‘This week will probably make the market status quo more transparent, since we are expecting a number of quite interesting reports to be published. Generally, foreign currency rates are now determined by the U.S. consumer price index; if

Mayor of Yekaterinburg Arkadiy Chernetskiy and Sverdlovsk Region Government are expected to sign the agreement on land ownership in Yekaterinburg this week, the spokesman for the Mayor Konstantin Pudov reports. ‘The agreement project is almost finished, there are only some legal details left out. Both parties are willing to settle the issue peacefully. After the agreement has been signed, both the city council and the regional government will have a chance to regulate the distribution of land allotments; the builders are expected to benefit from the agreement as well,’ Mr. Pudov observed.

‘Sverdlovsk Region Government has no right to buy the additional share issue of Sverdlovsk Gubernskiy Bank. I don’t believe they will actually go through with it, since this acquisition will definitely be questioned by both regional and federal law-enforcement agencies. Our public prosecution bodies have to file more and more criminal suits related to abuse of power by various authorities nowadays,’ Sverdlovsk Region Duma Deputy Vladimir Taskaev says. ‘The government must distribute the budgetary funds fairly rather than get involved in commercial affairs. This money would be much better off

The networks belonging to Golden Telecom Ltd. experienced a major breakdown on May 15, 2007, depriving the company’s users of Internet access. The alarming symptoms could be traced early on in the morning when the users’ connection kept going on and off. Then, the web became totally inaccessible at about noon. Golden Telecom was not able to explain what had caused the trouble; nor did the company announce how long it was going to take to fix the problem.

According to the Central Bank of Russia, the volume of loans given by Uralfinprombank to sole traders for a term of 91 to 180 days went down 83% (from 52.4 million RUR to 8.42 million RUR) in January-April 2007.

Officers of Ural Customs Administration found more than 1,000 pirated items while checking passenger trains 306 (Bishkek-Yekaterinburg) and 11 (Chita-Chelyabinsk), their spokesman reports. Among them are ‘PUMA’ sports outfits, ‘ADIDAS’ sneakers, shorts, T-shirts, and other kinds of sportswear. All of the obviously counterfeited goods were confiscated and stored; the owners of the produce will have to undergo administrative trials.

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by SberInvestBank to sole traders for more than 3 years went down 8% (from 8.307 million RUR to 7.564 million RUR) in January-March 2007.