Uralmashzavod signed a 300-million-ruble agreement with SeverStal, promising to provide them with two 500-ton pouring cranes in April and May 2008. All the design and planning is to be performed by Moscow-based VNIIPTMASH and Uralmashzavod’s R&D department. These will be AC variable frequency cranes (which means they are not too heavy and cheaper to maintain) meant for operating in SeverStal’s steel plant, that is, for filling converters with liquid metal. Uralmashzavod has already made Russia’s most powerful 520-ton pouring crane, two blast-furnace jackets, a modern continuous-casting

Ural Airlines is holding its final summer flights sale. You can get tickets for flights bound to Sochi, Krasnodar, and Anapa (all in the south of Russia) for only 4,999 RUR (including the fuel fee) if you book before May 31, 2007. All flights will be performed between June 1, 2007 and August 31, 2007. More information is available via the company’s help and information phone services or the corporate website.

Officers of Koltsovo airport (Yekaterinburg) disclosed an instance of illegal use of registered trademarks while handling a large shipment of footwear imported from the United Arab Emirates, says the spokesperson for Ural Customs Administration. 500 pairs of Adidas, Nike, and Reebok sneakers turned out to be some Chinese fakes. The firm that the sneakers belonged to was unable to produce the obligatory licensing agreements, which means their goods were not authentic. As it is illegal to sell counterfeited produce in Russia, the trademark offender will have to undergo two administrative

The Fifth Power Generation Company’ (OGK-5) has recently published a report on its financial success in the first quarter of 2007. The company’s revenues amounted to 8,141,082,000 RUR (compared with 4,742,362,000 RUR in January-March 2006), its gross profits and profits on sales reached 1,085,641,000 RUR and 969,329,000 RUR, respectively, with expenses outstripping the profits by 617,027,000 RUR. OGK-5’s profit tax and other payments came to 301,146,000 RUR in the first quarter of 2007. The company’s net profit amounted to 51,156,000 RUR, which falls short of the figures for January-March

Deputy Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government and Minister of Agriculture and Food Sergey Chemesov organized a press conference on May 3, 2007 to brief the reporters on the seasonal activities. According to the spokesperson for the Ministry, the regional government has been paying special attention to providing farmers and workers with enough equipment for the sowing season. 248.8 million RUR have already been allocated from the federal budget, which is 2.5 times better than a year earlier, so people can use the additional 165 tractors and 214 tillage machines this spring. The whole process is

Sverdlovsk Region Ministry for Economics and Labor published its report on the competitiveness of regional municipalities in 2006. The Ministry’s analysts say those were some truly successful areas that won in most categories. The municipality of Yekaterinburg was ranked first (compared with the second position in 2005), Verknyaya Pyshma was rated second (compared with the first position in 2005); Sukhoi Log was promoted from the seventh to the third position, Pervouralsk was demoted from the third to the fourth position, Nizhniy Tagil retained its fifth position. The Ministry reports the

Bank24.ru joined the Association of Regional Banks of Russia (Association ‘Russia’) after the latter agreed to accept the company and provided it with a membership certificate (No. 419). ‘Professional unions of bankers are the crucial foundation for rapid and stable development of a country’s financial and crediting institutions. Any bank depends on its counterparts as well as on the functionality of the entire system. Bank guilds help to make this unwritten interdependency law work and promote the establishment of a win-win working environment,’ says Bank24.ru’s BOD Chairman Boris Dyakonov.

A new contactless way of making payments (the transaction is performed by dint of RF channels rather than magnetic scanning) has come to be known as VISA payWave. ‘The brand will probably be quite popular with VISA’s English-speaking customers since the name clearly reflects the method and the convenience of such payments: a payment which is made at a wave of a hand. A card holder only needs to wave their Visa card in front of a secure reader (much in the manner of a magnetic key) and the transaction is done,’ SKB-Bank’s Card Director Evgeniy Belichenko says. PayWave is a great addition to or

The State Duma is about to consider a bill on mediation, a kind of activity quite new to the country that poses a number of challenges Russian mediators will probably have to face. One issue has to do with the lawyers’ community attempt to monopolize the yet fledgling but a very promising market. A great many experts, however, are positive a mediator needs to be a good psychologist with a good deal of experience in the humanities rather than a legal expert, for his or her task is to facilitate the out-of-court settlement of a dispute that satisfies both parties’ interests. This is equally

URSA Bank’s Barnaul-based subsidiary participated in the 12th international fair devoted to construction, improvement, and interior design. The fair took place in Barnaul, Russia, on April 24-27, 2007. The event was supported by Siberian Builders Union, Altai Region Union of Builders and Investors, and the city council. 430 enterprises and organizations from 46 Russian cities based in 31 different regions as well as Ukrainian, Kazakh, and Polish companies, exhibited their projects altogether, with over 9,000 people coming to see them. URSA Bank contributed to the fair by organizing a seminar

Federal Antimonopoly Service in Sverdlovsk Region found the educational department of Nizhniy Tagil guilty of a breach of the federal law regarding placement of orders for the supply of goods and services for state and municipal needs and ordered the department to get rid of the violations. The case was brought about by a complaint from Parad Company that claimed the department had violated the competition law while placing its orders for the acquisition of a number of software programs meant for schools and colleges in 2007. The inquiry handled by Federal Antimonopoly Service revealed that

‘I agree with many experts, that is, I believe that petrol prices will go up to 20 RUR per litre at the most after the oil export duty is going to be raised this June. I don’t think fuel is going to get any more expensive than this,’ Director of Institute of Economics of the Ural branch of RAS Alexander Tatarkin said to UrBC. ‘All in all, the decision to raise oil export duty appears to be ungrounded. Some authorities just take the decisions that suit their needs without bothering to make it clear to people why these decisions have actually been taken,’ he noted. Beginning from June 1, 2007,

Following the request of Rostourism, Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs has recently informed the other countries’ diplomatic representations (both those based in Moscow and the federal subjects) that a new federal law on changes made in the rules for Russian travel agents (originally adopted on February 5, 2007) should come into force on June 1, 2007. The Ministry announced that travel agents should now be held financially accountable for certain problems they might cause to their customers; they should also ensure greater consumer rights protection and enhance the quality and safety of

Rostechnadzor (the state environmental and technologic safety watchdog) provided Sverdlovsk EnergoGas Company with a license entitling the latter to selling electricity to end users through order 248 signed by head of Rostechnadzor Konstantin Pulikovskiy on April 12, 2007. The licensing procedure was made obligatory after the corresponding provision 291 was issued by the Russian Federation Government on May 6, 2005. Sverdlovsk EnergoGas Company, the guaranteeing supplier of 20 municipalities in the region, is operating at the retail market, selling electricity at fares determined by the

‘Some of our customers (the housing maintenance and utilities services) haven’t paid their bills since 2003,’ the spokesperson for Uralsevergas Oleg Vlasov said to UrBC. Among these debtors are Krasnouralsk Chemical Plant (its debt comes to 139,377,700,000 RUR) and the housing maintenance and utilities unit of Prigorodniy district (Gornouralskiy municipality) with its 41,092,900,000 RUR worth of debts. Gornouralskiy housing unit, with its 13 million RUR worth of debt, hasn’t paid the company anything for 28 months, Degtyarsk-based Biosphere hasn’t been paying for 25 months (and its debt comes

Sverdlovsk Region division of Rospotrebnadzor (the state consumer rights watchdog) has been doing raids of poultry farms in order to avoid possible problems occasioned by the beginning of the spring migration of birds. 19 out of 22 regional farms have been inspected for bird flu and compliance with the safety and prevention rules over the last two months. The farms have to be of a closed type, possess sanitary inspection rooms and be equipped with insulated disinfection barrier zones as well as have enough disinfectants and personal protection equipment in stock. This activity has been

The officers from the local division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the regional law-enforcement officers have recently taken a number of steps aimed at preventing economic crimes in the area; this has resulted in disclosing a series of financial frauds attributed to Bogdanovich Porcelain Works CFO. This executive is believed to have stolen 23 million RUR belonging to the company by transferring this money in the form of bill payments into the accounts of a fictitious firm that had allegedly sold the plant top-of-the-range equipment which, in fact, turned out to be a pile of

Rosselkhoznadzor (the state agricultural watchdog) banned the import of a few batches of meat produce proved to contain salmonellosis-related pathogens. These included 24.5 tons of U.S.-made chicken ribs, 24.9 tons of chicken wings and 25.9 tons of chicken legs from Brazil, and 19.9 tons of pork skins from Germany. This is why Rosselkhoznadzor set temporary limits on meat supplies from the U.S.-based Р-19128, Brazilian SIF 1797 and SIF 601, and German D SH-EUZ 10 EWG beginning from May 3, 2007. The agency asked the veterinary services in the U.S., Brazil, and Germany to look into the causes

Bank24.ru held a seminar on the modern savings techniques on April 24, 2007. The bank’s experts spoke on how to protect your money from inflation and make it yield profit; the company’s bill program appeared to receive the listeners’ greatest attention. ‘This is hardly surprising, as people are well aware of the benefits a bank deposit can offer, whereas bills of exchange are still a grey area to many of them. In the meantime, our bank’s bill schemes yield up to 13.75% a year, which is an interest rate not too many deposits can boast. Besides, a bill of exchange is a reliable way of making

The average existing home price in Yekaterinburg amounted to 67,055 RUR per square meter on April 24, 2007, reports the Analytical Department of Ural Chamber of Real Estate. The average existing home prices (per square meter of dwelling) in the center of Yekaterinburg (i.e. in Moskovskaya St., Chelyuskintsy St., Vostochnaya St., Dekabristy St., Belinskiy St., and Bolshakov St.) came to 80,357 RUR. The figure reached 70,472 RUR in Yekaterinburg’s most expensive residential area (Avtovokzal, Yugo-Zapadniy, Parkoviy, Botanicheskiy, Vtuzgorodok, Shartashskiy, ZhBI, Pionerskiy – downtown and the