UrBC, Magnitogorsk, August 9, 2018. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) saved RUR 269m in the first half of the year due to implementing workers’ improvement proposals, MMK Information & PR Department reports. 73% of all submitted proposals (1,857 altogether) got approved and implemented. More than a half of these (52%) had to do with job and industrial safety issues, 15% dwelt on resource savings, 7% focused on energy efficiency, and 26% were related to other issues. The plant’s management sees improvement proposals and inventors’ projects as the basis of its personnel development

UrBC, Moscow, August 9, 2018. Toyota is calling off over 20,000 Alphard, Corolla, Auris, and Yaris units off the Russian market due to airbag issues, Rosstandart reports. ‘The automobiles are being called off as there is a possibility the Takata airbags might act contrary to plan during an accident. Should the airbag get released in cases where deteriorate substances are involved, the gas producer might get broken and its fragments might find their way inside the car,’ the company explains. The call-off applies to automobiles made between March 2010 and May 2015. The gas producer will have to

UrBC, Moscow, August 9, 2018. The Russian low-cost airline Pobeda (a member of Aeroflot Group) is going to start charging its customers €25 for checking in at non-Russian airports, TASS refers to the air carrier as announcing. The airline says the decision was made after a recent increase in jet fuel prices. Online check-in is still free. The new rule comes into effect on October 28, 2018, when Pobeda switches to a wintertime schedule. The airline has to opt for this to avoid having to raise ticket prices because of growing jet fuel costs, the company says. According to the airline’s

UrBC, Moscow, August 9, 2018. An ad hoc team of experts at Russia’s Economic Development Ministry looked into the losses incurred by the national IT sector, ISPs, and mobile carriers after they had to comply with the recently adopted amendments to the counterterrorist legislation, Vedomosti reports. It is estimated that companies will have to spend RUR 20m on average to store the data of 500,000 users. This means Yandex will have to spend RUR 3.6bn and Mail.Ru Group RUR 5.2bn all in all. The new law is expected to hit the smaller IT market players the hardest, as they have to comply with the

UrBC, Moscow, August 9, 2018. Federal Grid Company United Energy Systems keeps very stable financially: the company’s revenues rose by 1.5 times in the last five years and reached RUR 216bn; its EBITDA went up by 30% and amounted to nearly RUR 130bn. The company has paid RUR 57bn in shareholder dividends since 2014. The dividends for the year 2017 are estimated at over RUR 20bn, which is one of the best results in the power industry sector. All these data were presented at Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev’s recent meeting with head of FGC UES Andrei Murov, the company’s Western Siberia

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 8, 2018. Thirty alumni of ChelPipe Group’s Future of White-Coated Metallurgy Corporate Training Program went through their oath-taking procedure this month, the Group’s press service reports. The solemn ceremony took place in the Group-patronized regiment in Gorny Shchit, Sverdlovsk Region. Winner of WorldSkills Sverdlovsk Region and contestant in WorldSkills Russia in Mechatronics Andrei Mikhailov was among the new soldiers on the day. ‘The regiment in Gorny Shchit is a place where the best alumni of our corporate training program serve their army terms; they all

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, August 8, 2018. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) shipped its pilot batch of metal goods to Turkey via Magnitogorsk-Baku-Tbilisi-Kars, the company’s Information & PR Department reports. MMK is now collaborating with Azerbaijan’s freight forwarder ADY Express to work through the logistics of shipping up to 250,000,000 kg of metal goods a year via this new route. This would amount to around a third of Turkey-based MMK Metalurji’s hot-rolled metal goods needs. So far, four containers (total weight: 120,000 kg) have been delivered onto MMK’s daughter enterprise in

UrBC, Chelyabinsk, August 8, 2018. Members of Chelyabinsk Region’s and Sverdlovsk Region’s business community are planning to go on a business trip to Kaliningrad at the end of August, South Urals Chamber of Commerce & Industry’s press service reports. The goal is to network with businessmen and women working in Kaliningrad Region, to coordinate a number of ministry meetings, and to pay visits to large local plants and enterprises. ‘There will be negotiations involving certain Kaliningrad companies that the Ural businesses are interested in. To organize the talks, we are currently

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 8, 2018. Ural Airlines and QIWI Group’s Sovest are now partners, the air carrier’s press service reports. ‘Starting August 1, 2018, you can choose to pay for your plane tickets in installments using Sovest card, with no interest or commissions. You don’t even have to make a down payment if you’d rather opt out of it, and you have two months’ time to pay out the entire amount,’ the press service says. When you book your tickets on www.uralairlines.com or with Ural Airlines mobile app, select ‘Card’ as your payment method and enter your Sovest card details. You can

UrBC, Moscow, August 8, 2018. The current system of subsidizing small and medium enterprises in non-central Russian constituencies with federal budget’s funds does little to ensure business development equality in these areas, Russia’s Accounts Chamber’s report states. In 2014-2016, over 20% of federal funding allocated for SME support got directed to five out of eighty-five constituencies. In 2017, some 40% of subsidies got directed to eleven constituencies, each of which received RUR 200m or more; eight constituencies received only 0.7% of all the federal funding available. Remarkably, five

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 7, 2018. Sverdlovsk Region is now among the top five Russian constituencies in terms of plane tickets, hotels, guided tours, package vacations, and airport transfers booked online through MegaFon’s travel service, the company press service reports. Moscow and Moscow Region, Saint Petersburg, and Krasnodar Territory are, respectively, No.1 to No.4 on the list. By the middle of summer, online bookers based in Chelyabinsk Region, Perm Territory, and Khanty-Mansiysky Autonomous Region made it to No. 6, 7, and 8 in the rating, respectively. It is reported that men are

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 7, 2018. The average price of diesel fuel available on Sverdlovsk Region’s filling stations rose from RUR 43.98 at the beginning of July to RUR 44.25 per liter on July 23-29, 2018. According to the local division of Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service, the average price of diesel fuel came to RUR 43.98 on June 18-July 8, 2018. As for gasoline, the prices remained the same throughout most of July and came to RUR 43.11 per liter of AI 95 and RUR 40.29 per liter of AI 92 on average.

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, August 7, 2018. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) allocated RUR 157.4m for charity projects in the six months of 2018, the company press service reports. The projects get coordinated by MMK-sponsored Metallurg Foundation in Magnitogorsk and aim to support and improve the living standard of the elderly. One of the projects, known as The Older Generation, involves 14,000+ retirees who used to work for MMK and other local industrial enterprises; these people receive some monthly allowance to complement their old-age pensions. Additionally, 3,000 retirees who used to

UrBC, Moscow, August 7, 2018. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the new legislation to increase the value-added tax from 18% to 20% on August 3, 2018. The full text is now available on the Kremlin’s website. The new bill also sets the obligatory retirement insurance rate at 22% (within the current upper limit) and at 10% for anything beyond the taxation base. Additionally, there will still be a zero VAT on air travel in the Far Eastern Federal District. The new law comes into effect on January 1, 2019. The bill was presented to the State Duma on June 16 and signed in the third reading

UrBC, Moscow, August 7, 2018. United Company RUSAL reports its profit decreased by 31% in the second quarter of 2018 compared with the first quarter, Kommersant refers to the company report as stating. The figure reached $218m, which is, in fact, 8% more than one year earlier. In terms of half-year figures, the company’s net adjusted profit rose by 15% to $535m. The second quarter’s revenues also dropped by 18%, down to $2.25bn. However, the revenues for the first half of the year went up by 4% and reached $4.99bn. Oleg Deripaska-controlled UC RUSAL and En+ were both placed on the U.S.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 6, 2018. The number of MegaFon Ural’s customers who use their smartphones to pay for their shopping has tripled since the start of the year. According to MegaFon’s analysts, the option is mostly popular with men, who make up 70% of Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Google Pay users, the company press service says. Smartphones got used for nearly 40,000 shopping transactions at all kinds of Ural stores in July (total amount: RUR 12.1m). Every other payment was made at a grocery store/restaurant/bar/cafe/bakery. Gas-filling stations, pet shops, taxis, and pharmacies were

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 6, 2018. Nevyansk’s public prosecution authorities report on a case of air protection legislation breach at AO Nevyanskiy Tsementnik. According to Sverdlovsk Region’s public prosecution authorities’ press service, the plant’s production facilities have been emitting nonorganic dust with high silicon content, even though the cement-making company has no emission permit of any kind. Legal action was taken against the plant’s Head of Job Safety, Industrial Safety & the Environment Department, with charges based on Article 8.21 (Part 1) of the Russian Federation

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 6, 2018. UralTransBank’s branch at 7 Chernoistochinskoye Chaussee (Bldg 4) in Nizhniy Tagil closes on August 31, 2018, the bank’s SMM service announces through their VKontakte account. Now UralTransBank also closed three of its branches in Yekaterinburg in April 2018. These were the outlets at 6 Gotvald St (Bldg 4), 17 Titov St, and 15 Kosmonavtov Ave. The bank has also been on the Central Bank’s non-compliers list for sixteen months now, the regulatory body’s website states.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 6, 2018. A half-finished building of a business center at 5 Oktyabrskaya Ploschad will soon be used for a new purpose. The construction began as early as 1993; the building can now serve as ad space for Yekaterinburg’s EXPO 2025 promotion campaign. Two parts of the semi-completed structure at 5 Oktyabrskaya Ploschad in Yekaterinburg got bought out by Navigator (founder: UMMC Director-General Andrei Kozitsyn) for RUR 200m in May 2018. Yekaterinburg Duma deputy Oleg Khabibullin purchased yet another section of the building. The asset got put on sale after SO

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 6, 2018. Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court will soon be looking into Yekaterinburg-based OOO VVK’s insolvency application, the court reports. The application got submitted with the court on August 2, 2018. The claim was placed by the company’s creditor OOO Ofion, whose claims currently amount to RUR 25.167m. OOO VVK was set up as a residential and non-residential buildings developer in 2015. According to public sources, Evgeny Beloussov, who got sentenced to nine years in jail for housing fraud in March 2018, is one of the company’s co-founders. Beloussov was