UrBC, Yekaterinburg, November 20, 2015. The overall amount of Sverdlovsk Region residents’ past-due credit card debts rose by 3.2% in the third quarter of 2015 and came to 20.8% of the entire debt amount, the National Bureau of Credit History reports. The overall amount of locals’ past-due car loan repayments went up by 0.2% and reached 7.7%. According to the Bureau, the amount of past-due loan repayments stood at its highest in August and September (21.3% of all consumer loan debts, 17.1% of all credit card debts, 8.3% of all car loan debts, and 4.3% of all mortgage debts). ‘The overall

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, November 20, 2015. The heat and power station operated by Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation’s head plant got certified by Sverdlovsk Region Energy Ministry to operate in the heating season 2015/2016. It is reported the station was inspected by a committee appointed by Sverdlovsk Region Power Supply Safety Office. ‘The heat and power station is particularly important not only for the plant’s production premises but also for the entire Dzerzhinsky District of Nizhniy Tagil. In the summer, the station had its boilers, heat-generating units, chemical filtering facilities, and

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk Region, November 19, 2015. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) placed its catalogue of automobile steels on the company website. ‘To make things easier for our customers in the car-making industry, we placed an interactive electronic catalogue of various grades of steel the company offers them. There are separate rubrics on every steel type, with information on chemical composition, mechanical properties, sheet width and other measurements, and so on,’ the company says. The catalogue is available at www.mmk.ru’s home page under the heading that reads

UrBC, Moscow, November 19, 2015. Russia’s industrial production output declined by 3.3% in January-October 2015 compared with a year earlier, Rosstat reports. In October, the decrease was 3.6% compared with a year earlier; however, the figure was 5.2% higher than in September 2015.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, November 19, 2015. 1,435 luggage pieces have been brought to Yekaterinburg from Egyptian resorts in one week; 667 of them have already been returned to their owners by Koltsovo Airport staff and 125 pieces were sent to passengers’ home addresses, the airport’s press service reports. It took twenty-four planes on scheduled flights from Moscow to transfer all the luggage items to Yekaterinburg. An ad hoc team was set up at the airport as first passengers started arriving from Egypt to whom contact details and copies of luggage stubs could be given to stay in touch; as soon

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, November 19, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region’s farmers ended up with fewer head of cattle this year (including not only cows but also sheep and goats) than a year earlier, Sverdlovskstat reports. It is reported the overall number went down by 1% in January-October 2015 compared with January-October 2014 and now comes to 272,000. The number of cows dropped by 1.6%, down to 116,900, that of sheep and goats by 5.7%, down to 69,100. At the same time, the overall count of pigs rose by 2.8%. up to 344,500, and that of poultry by2.3%, up to 13.6m.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, November 19, 2015. Prices went down by 6.4% on Yekaterinburg existing homes market compared with the start of the year and now come to 71,385 RUR per m2 on average, Ural Real Estate Chamber reports. Housing prices declined by 0.8% in the last four weeks alone, so homes in the city’s third and fourth most expensive districts are now offered for 65,636 RUR per m2 and 61,363 RUR per m2, respectively (-0.9%). Places in the city’s remotest and cheapest districts are offered for 52,784 RUR per m2 (-0.3%). As for centrally located apartments, however, prices went up by 1.8% and

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, November 19, 2015. UBT-Service (a daughter enterprise of Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation’ head plant) turned three years old this year. The company is in charge of construction, operation, and maintenance of roads, pavements, and yards on the production premises as well as in parts of Nizhniy Tagil. According to the corporation’s press service, the company grew responsible for much more than urban development of the city’s Dzerzhinsky District in these three years. In 2013, for example, UBT-Service purchased an asphalt-manufacturing facility with the capacity of 175,000 kg

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, November 18, 2015. 74% of job-seekers based in Sverdlovsk Region complain of age discrimination on the labor market; 81% of employers admit the problem exists, HeadHunter Ural reports. It is reported a half of local employers agree that there are age limits to certain positions and that middle-aged candidates are the market’s most vulnerable category. 22% of job-seekers believe they haven’t been hired because of their age. A CV analysis has shown that candidates in the 50+ group mainly apply for jobs in Production, Accounting, and Sales. The group currently makes up 5% of

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, November 18, 2015. Around 100 villages might get liquidated in Sverdlovsk Region, the constituency’s Deputy Construction Minister Vladimir Veniaminov said at a Legislative Assembly session. According to Veniaminov, an inventory of local villages and settlements was carried out which made it clear that many of these were not lived in on a regular basis. ‘So the approximate number of settlements that need to be either liquidated or preserved is now clear. There are about a hundred of them,’ he said. Deputy Chair of Local Government Committee Galina Artemieva said some of

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, November 18, 2015. Deputies of Sverdlovsk Region Legislative Assembly adopted the first reading of the constituency’s budget for next year. This primary financial document states expected inflow at 173.3bn RUR and expected spending at 189.6bn RUR (with 15.9bn RUR of budget deficit). A number of deputies had suggested considering eliminating administrative districts to reduce expenses, yet the Finance Minister Galina Kulachenko said these units were necessary ‘and their necessity was obvious’. Even though 70% of budget funds are to be directed to social welfare programs,

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, November 18, 2015. Yekaterinburg customers decided against booking New Year trips to France this week, so the travel agents’ sales are almost zero, Zima-Leto Group reports. Tour operators believe that sales have stopped because of a series of terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13, 2015. ‘Agents will hardly be able to sell any trips to France for a while, the demand is only likely to recover next year, when the panic effect becomes less pronounced. Provided, of course, nothing of the sort ever happens in Paris again,’ says the Group’s director Olga Gulyar. This

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, November 18, 2015. Kamensk-Uralsky Foundry Plant/KULZ (a member enterprise of Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation) is currently having its working conditions re-evaluated by Modern Solutions, an independent expert company from Yekaterinburg; the company was accredited by the Federal Labor Ministry, the corporation’s press service reports. The outsourced experts’ task is to take measurements of air cleanliness, noise levels, and labor severity in order to detect potentially hazardous and harmful production factors. They also check whether workers use protective gear and devices

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, November 17, 2015. Twenty-three flights have been operated from Egypt to Yekaterinburg’s Koltsovo Airport since November 7, bringing home 4,922 passengers (including 1,037 children), MoE’s Sverdlovsk Region division reports. Additionally, 16,000kg of luggage arrived at the airport separately. 833 passengers (including 92 children) arrived to Koltsovo from Hurghada over the weekend. The Ministry of Emergencies’ rescue team is still on duty at the airport.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, November 17, 2015. Sales of cameras and photographic equipment dropped by 30% compared with a year earlier, the store Photo-Man informs UrBC. ‘This used to be a ‘hot’ market but it’s turned ‘cold’ now, which means customers need to be talked into buying this or that item. A lot depends on the store’s strategy and the techniques employed to lure more customers in. However, the overall demand is stable enough and is expected to rise in the holiday season, just like in the previous years. I don’t think the situation is likely to be greatly different next year,’ they say.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, November 17, 2015. Fewer crops were harvested in Sverdlovsk Region this year compared with a year earlier, the constituency’s Deputy Agriculture Minister Vladimir Grebnev said at a press conference today. 628,500,000kg of grains got harvested, which was 32,000,000kg less than in 2014, and 780,000,000 kg of potatoes. ‘Unfortunately, some of the potato crops couldn‘t be preserved because of lack of storage space,’ he said. Grebnev explained this year’s weather conditions were unfavorable, which affected the crop output even though farmers allocated 1,000 hectares more for

UrBC, Moscow, November 17, 2015. Yekaterinburg got on the list of Russia’s Top10 places to go to for the winter break; the list was made by the Russian hotel booking services Oktogo.ru and is based on the number of reservations made by independent travelers for December 31, 2015-January 10, 2016. ‘People will come to Yekaterinburg for two days on average and will pay 2,500 RUR per night on average,’ says the company’s Brand Communications Manager Yakov Sadchikov. The other cities on the list are Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Kazan, Kaliningrad, Pskov, Yaroslavl, Velikiy Novgorod, Yekaterinburg,

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, November 17, 2015. Two new EDM machines have been launched at Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation’s head plant recently. The company press service reports the machines were purchased within the framework of the national defense industry retooling program. Both of them have been launched, with the startup and commissioning performed by the supplier. The machine operators spent a week’s training at the manufacturing plant. ‘The advantage of this equipment is that it can be used for a wide variety of purposes and is more productive than its older counterparts. The electrode can be

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk Region, November 16, 2015. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) had its new automobile body sheets certified by foreign car-makers operating their production plants in Russia. This was, in fact, part of the national import substitution program. The company intends to keep getting its other metal goods certified by foreign car-makers, their press service says. The program took off in the fall of 2013, with MMK delivering its customers over 32,000,000 kg of products since then. The company is now completing commercial jobs on a regular basis. The

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, November 16, 2015. ChTPZ Group and Severstal renewed their strategic cooperation agreement (now valid through 2020) at the recent Metal Expo 2015 Exhibition, the Group’s press service reports. The paper was signed by the Group’s Director-General Alexander Grubman and Severstal Russian Steel’s Director-General Sergei Toropov. The idea is to work together to meet the oil and gas companies’ demand for ChTPZ Group’s high-quality pipes made of Severstal-supplied metal goods. ‘Severstal is one of the Group’s key pipe metal suppliers. The company delivered around 65,000,000 kg