UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 22, 2015. MegaFon and Uralvagonzavod Corporation signed a cooperation agreement. Under the two parties’ three-year contract, the telecommunications provider will ensure good quality connection for the corporation’s employees through a single mobile and landline network at attractive rates, Uralvagonzavod’s press service reports. MegaFon will keep offering the company its attractive pricing policy and benefits of a wide coverage area; additionally, a new task is to introduce the Fixed Mobile Conversion/Express Dial service. The employees’ mobile phone numbers

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 21, 2015. Corteo Fashion Mall was recently sold for 232m RUR, UrBC’s own source reports. ‘The auction went through, with Moscow-based Bonus Plus proclaimed the winning bidder. The purchase and sale agreement is expected to be signed soon,’ Sberbank of Russia’s Ural branch reports. Corteo Fashion Mall was set up in 2005 as a premium-class shopping mall. The place had to be closed down seven years later, and the building was handed over to Sberbank to cover debts. The mall’s former proprietor, Kompaniya Stroymaster 3000, currently owes its creditors over 400m RUR.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 21, 2015. People living in Ural Federal District now owe their housing services suppliers 37.2bn RUR, 20% more than a year earlier. The increase might reach 30% by the end of the year, Sequoia Credit Consolidation reports. Ural Federal District is responsible for 18% of the country’s residents’ overall housing debs and comes second in terms of the debt amount after Central Federal District. For one, the unpaid hot water and heating bills make up over 50% of the entire debt amount, the company says. The rising debts have to do with the population’s shrinking

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 21, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region Prime Minister Denis Pasler and Head of Yekaterinburg Council Alexander Yakob met to consider buying new tramways for the city’s public transport system. The city council reports the meeting was held on the premises of Uraltransmash, a tram manufacturer. The plant’s employees presented their modern trams and recent developments to the two officials. Tram 407, one of those presented at the meeting, is a tramway with a low-floor section in the middle. The section makes up 39% of the floor area. The tram is fit for 190 people, with 27

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 21, 2015. There were 6,045 workers on idle time in Sverdlovsk Region as of September 16, compared with 1,532 people on August 26, Sverdlovsk Region Legislative Assembly Deputy Andrei Alshevskikh refers to Labor & Employment Department as stating. The deputy’s Facebook status describes the current situation in Sosva, where 200 people are going to find themselves out of jobs. ‘The terrifying rumors proved true: Correctional Facility 18, one of the town’s two employers, is to be closed down, so nearly all of the staff (201 people out of 219) will have to go in

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 21, 2015. Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation adopted the company’s labor safety and healthcare policy for 2015-2018. According to the company press service, the policy is targeted at protecting the employees’ lives and health and is based on the government’s labor protection policy, with industry-specific adjustments. The goals are to keep the protection of workers’ lives and health a priority, ensure safe working conditions in all the workplaces, take preventive steps to avoid accidents at work, and to maintain and improve the labor

UrBC, Moscow, September 18, 2015. More than 10,000 cyber crimes were registered in Russia in the first half of 2015, RIA Novosti refers to Head of Russia’s Internal Affairs Ministry’s K Department Alexei Moshkov as saying. ‘Over 10,000 crimes in the telecommunications and computer data sector were registered in Russia in the first six months of the year, which was 67% more than a year earlier,’ Moshkov said. According to Moshkov, 11,000 cyber crimes were detected in the course of the entire year 2014. The official pointed out that cyber criminals were using malware such as Trojans and other

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 18, 2015. 47% of Russians have felt the negative impact of sanctions imposed on their country by the West, the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center reports. 22% of respondents did not feel affected in any way, and 21% of those surveyed said things got better. A half of respondents feel the country’s foreign policy is more important than economic losses. 37% of those surveyed do not share this view.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 18, 2015. The number of sheep and goats at Sverdlovsk Region-based farms decreased by 50% between August 2014 and August 2015 and reached 1,200, Sverdlovskstat reports. The overall number of sheep and goat livestock decreased by 4.6%, down to 77,900. 65,000 of those belong to private owners. As for beef cattle, the number of these went up by 0.7% and came to 280,500 head of cattle. The number of pigs dropped by 1.7%, down to 336,000. Poultry amounts remained the same in August 2015 as a year earlier, namely, 13.6m.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 18, 2015. Yekaterinburg proved one of Russia’s 10 Best Cities to Work, Superjob’s research findings indicate. There are forty-five cities in this rating altogether, with Yekaterinburg coming 9th in Group A (cities with good employment potential, that is, high salaries, low competition, little unemployment and job migration). Moscow was the first on the list, followed by Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk and Saint Petersburg.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 18, 2015. Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant (a member enterprise of Uralvagonzavod Corporation) is going to deliver its most powerful diesel-electric bulldozer, DET 400, to Pervouralsk Silica Plant, the corporation’s press service reports. ‘The customer plant is one year older than Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant and has been producing firebricks needed for repair and maintenance of smelting ovens since 1932. The plant has its own clay quarry where a few of our bulldozers are already in use. The customer has plenty of experience of our vehicles, which is why they chose

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 17, 2015. 48,532 people officially registered as unemployed with Sverdlovsk Region employment agencies between January and August 2015, Labor & Employment Department reports. 39,609 people registered as job-seekers as of September 1; 38,543 of them were out of employment at the time of application. The official unemployment rate stood at 1.42% in early September, compared with 1.14% a year earlier. The overall number of people looking for employment came to 139,412 on September 1, 2015. The overall unemployment rate stood at 6.1%, compared with 5.8% a year

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 17, 2015. Yekaterinburg existing homes market prices dropped by an average of 0.9% in the last four weeks, Ural Real Estate Chamber reports. Compared with the start of the year, the price decrease is 4.7% and now stands at 72,632 RUR per m2, the Chamber reports. The market supply has remained more or less the same, with around 11,450 apartments and some 1,800 rooms in communal apartments for sale within the Chamber’s database; it usually takes up to 5.5 months to make a sale. Over the last four weeks, prices decreased most noticeably in the downtown locations

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 17, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region’s industrial production index went down by 4.9% in August 2015 compared with July 2015, Sverdlovskstat reports. The index also declined by 10.5% against last August, compared with Russia’s average of 4.3%. In the January-August time span, the index dropped by 3.1% against January-August 2014. Production of fossil fuels dropped by 10.7% against last August and by 3.5% against July 2015, the index in the processing industries declined by 12% against last August and by 6% against July 2015. At the same time, the index went up by 2.2%

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 17, 2015. Oksana Burganskaya, Chair of Youth Council at LEPSE (a member enterprise of UVZ Corporation), got elected into Kirov Region’s Public Chamber. Burganskaya was proposed as a candidate by Union of Russia’s Machine-Builders’ Kirov Region division, the corporation’s press service reports. ‘First of all, I am planning to engage in very practical activities such as the organizatino of specific events, in which field I already have plenty of experience. Secondly, my aim is to conduct expert evaluation of draft bills under consideration. I am naturally mostly

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 17, 2015. Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev paid a visit to Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s stand at the International Import Replacement Exhibition where the company’s civil produce was displayed. According to the corporation’s press service, the Director-General Oleg Sienko presented the Prime Minister the company’s innovative product, KtsKh PKM 25/0.4, a tank car with body made of composite materials. Sienko spoke about the advantages of the product designed and manufactured specifically under the company’s import replacement program. In addition to the

UrBC, Moscow, September 16, 2015. Sales of household appliances and electronic goods dropped by 26.2% (in physical terms) in Russia in the first half of 2015 compared with a year earlier, Interfax refers to GfK as stating. In money terms, sales declined by 15.3%, even though these goods actually grew 38% more expensive on average. ‘There is little immediate hope for the market recovery, since the ongoing devaluation of the ruble will most likely keep the inflation rate going up and the demand going down, which makes the year 2016 look very uncertain,’ says GfK Head of Digital Goods Department

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 16, 2015. Head of Yekaterinburg Council Alexander Yakob gave orders for the heating season to begin, the city council’s press service reports. ‘The take-off does not actually mean that radiators will grow hot at all the buildings at once on the very first day of this very important campaign. You can’t ‘warm up’ a large city by simply pressing a button. An entire chain of facilities, where every actor has a specific function to perform, needs to be activated. First of all, heating suppliers will focus on getting the heating grids filled with water. After that,

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 16, 2015. Yekaterinburg residents have over 3.5bn RUR worth of unpaid housing bills altogether, Deputy Head of Yekaterinburg Council Alexei Kozhemyako said at a press conference today. According to the official, the better part of the debt amount has to do with heating power and hot water supply. At the same time, 98% of all the communal housing bills do get paid. ‘We use every legal means of persuading the debtors to pay, including courts issuing collection warrants, district housing committees collaborating with the debtors, and suppliers limiting access to

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, September 16, 2015. Supreme Hockey League’s new season 2015/2016 began with Sputnik Hockey Club (sponsored by Uralvagonzavod Corporation) and Pensa-based Diesel meeting in Nizhniy Tagil. The players were welcomed on the ice by Sputnik Director and Club Chairman Takhir Dukayev and Sputnik Board of Trustees Chairman and Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s Deputy DG Alexei Zharich. I’d like to wish both teams good luck and to encourage supporters to come to the games. A Hyundai Solaris will be given out in a prize-drawing which all the season ticket holders can join, and a TV is