German Consulate-General started accepting applications for an interview necessary for getting a Schengen visa on February 27, 2007. The visas themselves are expected to be issued beginning from March 6, 2007 when the visa section is going to start operating. At the beginning, these will only be the dwellers of Yekaterinburg and Sverdlovsk Region who will be able to get a Schengen visa at the consulate, but, eventually, the service will become available to other regions of Ural Federal District as well.

Verkh-Isetskiy Court of Yekaterinburg decided to prolong the detention of local entrepreneur Pavel Fedulyev (who is accused of fraud and mass-scale insurgencies) by another four months and two days. Mr. Fedulyev was detained on November 1, 2007, and his detention has already been extended twice.

SverdlovEnergoSbyt, the region’s heat and electricity supplier, will have to cut electricity consumption by Serov Ferrous Alloys Plant, reports the company’s press officer. According to SverdlovEnergoSbyt, this has been brought about by unpaid electricity bills which, in their turn, were left unpaid as a result of certain violations in the supplier-changing procedures. The plant announced it was going to cancel its agreement with SverdlovEnergoSbyt at the beginning of 2007. The latter spent two months discussing the procedure of transferring the plant from one supplier to another; these

The local division of the Federal Consumer Rights Protection and Human Well-Being Agency (aka Rospotrebnadzor) filed an administrative suit against Russian Standard Bank that is now charged with failing to produce data and using terms of agreements that infringe upon the consumers’ rights, says Rospotrebnadzor’s Consumer Rights Protection Director Natalia Afanasieva. ‘It’s a bit difficult to institute legal proceedings against a bank. They normally refer to bank secrecy, so getting the records one needs for analysis is virtually impossible. So far, we’ve only been considering cases connected

Unless the food safety requirements are met, the import of Indian rice to Russia might be banned completely beginning from May 1, 2007, says the spokesperson for Rosselkhoznadzor (the state agricultural watchdog). India was asked to deal with its crops within a month so as to provide each shipment with documents about what pesticides (as well as how much and when) were used in production and storage of rice. ‘If they fail to meet these requirements, Rosselkhoznadzor will have to put limits on rice import from India, or even ban it completely until this rice meets Russian safety standards,’

Ural Airlines is now offering special menus for people who observe the Lent or are simply trying to lead a healthier lifestyle, reports the spokesperson for the carrier. ‘Such special offers as Lent-Time Meals or Vegetarian Meals are quite popular with the local travelers,’ says Commercial Director Dmitriy Lvov. The Lent-time meals include fresh and cooked vegetables, fruit, juices, and nuts. The new offer is going to make it possible for the Lent-observing clients of Ural Airlines to fly where they need without compromising with their religious beliefs. The special meal can be booked when

‘Noviy Grad (the developer) has been trying to enter the markets of small regional towns for a while now. This builder turned out to be dishonest: it took the money of people from Yekaterinburg and Berezovskiy but never put up any buildings. Aware of being quite infamous, Noviy Grad might now try to attract money through its partners, for example, Victoria SKK,’ Konstantin Bruner of Affordable Housing NGO said to UrBC relating to the recently advertised construction projects in Yekaterinburg’s satellite towns placed by Victoria SKK. ‘Noviy Grad specializes in low-rise apartment buildings,

‘Sberbank of Russia’s IPO was definitely far from being ‘people’s’ one. However, even though many experts felt quite pessimistic about it, it’s quite certain that Sberbank has already collected 260 billion RUR,’ Vsevolod Chaschin, General Director of Blagodat Securities Investment Company, said to UrBC. Sberbank kept accepting investors’ bids from January 30 to February 20, 2007. The price of the offering amounted to 89,000 RUR, and there was round about $10.5 billion worth of bids. The media report that Alisher Usmanov, the co-owner of Gasmetall Holding, became one of the largest investors

Aviacon Zitotrans’s IL 76 flying from Ufa to Beirut had to go back to its airport of departure after one of the plane’s engines started acting up, the spokesperson for AVS Group (Aviacon Zitotrans is its member) said to UrBC. During the flight, the chip detector of one of the engines indicated some trouble and, according to the flight manual, in a case like this the crew must stop the engine. The carrier decided to bring the plane back to Koltsovo airport where the conditions are favorable for looking into the incident in all the detail. The Ural division of State Aviation Surveillance (part

There were 13 large food enterprises in Yekaterinburg on January 1, 2007. Six companies closed down last year, namely, Alvis (a tobacco factory), Vinchampagncombinat and Zvezda (two local wineries), Nord (a cold storage facility), Seafood Delicatessen, and Aquarius (a beverage maker). Apart from the operating large enterprises, there are also 70 smaller companies, which means there are 10 more of them than in January 2006, reports the press officer of the city council. These businesses have been operating in compliance with the strategic project referred to as Production of High Quality Foods

‘Underdevelopment of small business in the field agriculture is our mistake,’ Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government Alexei Vorobiev said at the meeting devoted to the region’s success in the socio-economic field and in the implementation of the national top-priority projects in 2006. At the same time, the share of small businesses in the total business turnover amounted to 31% (500 billion RUR, which is 25% better than in 2005); the number of people employed by small businesses exceeded .5 million, with 19,000 job vacancies created in 2006. 164 million RUR (which is 2.7 times more than in

‘We haven’t investigated the affairs of Metro in terms of their having banks empowered to deal in factoring yet, since we haven’t been ordered to do so by our seniors, but if we are, we shall naturally inspect them,’ the spokesperson for Sverdlovsk Region division of Federal Antimonopoly Service said to UrBC. Federal Antimonopoly Service has recently completed the first stage of checking how well the food chains comply with the antimonopoly legislation when dealing with their suppliers and, in particular, when there exists a factoring agreement. The Service monitored a number of chains,

Ural Airlines keeps offering discounts: it has just reduced the price of the tickets to Israel by 70%. Since this airline is the only carrier that performs direct Yekaterinburg -Tel Aviv flights, Ural Airlines is trying to make the trip to the Holy Land more affordable to the local population, reports their press officer. Anyone who buys a return ticket (Yekaterinburg – Tel Aviv – Yekaterinburg) between February 19 and June 20, 2007 will only have to pay ?319 plus the fuel and airport fees. The direct flight is available every other Wednesday and is performed on Airbus A 320. The company’s

According to the Central Bank of Russia, the volume of loans given by UralFinPromBank to nongovernmental profit-making organizations for a term of 31 to 90 days went down 12% (from 217,910,000 RUR to 191,408,000 RUR) in October-December 2006.

Federal Insurance Surveillance Agency annulled licenses of five insurers (Moscow-based Alfa Insurance Ltd., license С № 3960 77, registration No. 3960; Bask-Plus Insurance Company Ltd. based in Belovo, Kemerov Region, license 3520D, registration No. 3234; RAU-Garant Insurance Company based in Arkhangelsk, license 3935D, registration No. 1491; Rostok-MSK Medical Insurance Company Ltd. based in Irkutsk, license С № 2544, and Yekaterinburg-based Farn, license 3980D, registration No. 3653) and suspended the license of one insurance company (RiskMedia Management Insurance Company Ltd.. (license

The students of Ural State Architectural Academy were awarded for winning in the competition for the best architectural design of Academic construction area of Yekaterinburg. The project known as Meridian was considered the best, and its authors have been given 90,000 RUR in recognition of this. The authors of the second best projects (The Room for Modern Life and A Series of Dwelling Houses) received 60,000 RUR each. The third place was divided among Green City, The Center of Residential Area, and The Flow: Terraced Houses. The author of Green City received a special award and was invited to

Machine-Building Plant located in Electrostal, Moscow Region, produced and stored six experimental fuel assemblies for BN-600 power generating unit of Beloyarskaya nuclear power station, reports RosAtom. These assemblies include two items coated with new radiation-resistant steel known as EC164. Their testing is expected to prove that this new alloy is going to be effective for production of parts used in the reactor core (this covers both BN-800 and the BN-1800 currently at the developmental stage). RosAtom is going to put up a new high-power reactor (BN-800) by 2015, which means it would be

Evraz Group obtained the European Commission’s permission to control Highveld Steel and Vanadium Corporation Limited (provided it complies with a number of requirements). According to the spokesperson for Evraz, the decision was made by the European Commission at an early stage of considering the case in terms of compliance with the antimonopoly law. Evraz is going to sell some of Highveld’s vanadium-production facilities and related assets, including some Vanchem facilities in WitBank, the South African Republic, their share in Mapoc mine, and a 50% share holding of South Africa Japan

The natural person loan portfolio of Ural Bank of Sberbank of Russia amounted to over 54.1 billion RUR at the beginning of 2007, which is 17.3 billion better than a year earlier. Mortgage loans comprised around 20% of the portfolio; the number of auto loans went up 3.6 times compared to the beginning of 2006. ‘Last year, the competition on the regional consumer lending market was extremely fierce,’ says Vyacheslav Reshetnikov, Consumer Lending Director of Ural Bank of Sberbank of Russia. ‘Still, we managed to achieve impressive rate of loan portfolio growth through coming up with more and

The preferences of people who use commercial banks have changed a lot over the past year, claims a recent survey. The respondents were asked about their top-priority proviso that could actually influence their choice of a type of deposit. The survey was conducted by SKB-Bank online via the corporate website www.skbbank.ru; 150 people responded altogether. The results of the survey were compared with those of the survey conducted in February 2006. It thus appears that the interest rate offered on a deposit is still the top-priority factor for 35.7% of respondents (the majority of those