August 19, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region’s private and business electric power users currently owe their power suppliers 5.5bn RUR, 2.5bn RUR out of which stem from electricity bills not paid by the communal housing services and utilities companies. Additionally, individuals and companies owe their heating power and hot water suppliers 6bn RUR, Sverdlovsk Region division of Energosbyt Plus reports. Five local towns’ debt figures have been the highest since April 2015: this is the case with Rezh (over 259m RUR), Artemovsky (103m RUR), Alapayevsk (98m RUR), Kushva (106m RUR), and Krasnouralsk (97m

August 19, 2015. Eterno, a stamp-welded parts manufacturer and a joint venture set up by ChTPZ Group and Rosnano, has been successfully audited for compliance of its quality management system with STO Gazprom 9001-2012 standards, the Group’s press service reports. The audit was carried out by Russian Register. Getting Gazpromsert approval is a proviso a business must meet in order to make its bids in Gazprom’s tenders for companies that deal in design, development, production, and delivery of stamp-welded parts for natural gas and oil pipelines. The auditors gave particularly good feedback on

August 19, 2015. An ATM located at Sberbank branch at 35 Baikalskaya St in Yekaterinburg exploded as a result of a burglary at 3 AM today, the bank’s press service reports. Some of the money got stolen from the blown-up ATM, with some damage done to the branch as well. The exact amount of overall damage isn’t quite clear at the moment. ‘The apartment building where Sberbank branch is located remained intact, with this extremely dangerous burglary fortunately producing no casualties,’ the press service says. This is, in fact, not the first time ATMs have been blown up in Sverdlovsk Region. For

August 19, 2015. Lepse Director-General Gennady Mamayev gave out keys to new apartments at 10 Lepse St to four of the plant’s employees, Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s press service reports. Company housing was offered to Oleg Galiulin from the cold pressing department, Svetlana Savelyeva from the zinc- and paint-coating department, engineer Dmitri Zykov, and deputy head of repairs Alexander Minin. All of them have a reputation for their great production performance, professional skills, a contribution to the plant’s social life, and respect their colleagues have for their expertise. The

August 19, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region proved one of the top five most adamant complainers about the growing food prices: complaints were placed with Russia’s Antimonopoly Service between August 2014 and August 2015, the Service’s website states. Sverdlovsk Region’s residents placed 231 complaints with the Service altogether, with over 8,800 complaints filed in the country on the whole. The greatest number of appeals was recorded in January 2015. Most of the queries were related to growing dairy foods prices (1,300) as well as the price of sugar (1,289), vegetables (970), and fruit (738). The

August 18, 2015. Rosgosstrakh, an insurance company, was sentenced to a 7,000-RUR fine in Yekaterinburg; the company was detected to make its customers buy extra (unnecessary) services, Sverdlovsk Region division of Rospotrebnadzor (the state consumer rights watchdog) states. It was revealed in the course of an inquiry that a Yekaterinburg resident had come to the insurance company’s office to get the obligatory third-party liability car insurance. The company only agreed to sell the customer the insurance policy if he also bought life insurance for a one-year period (March 22, 2015 to March

August 18, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is going to process Pervouralsk Pipe Mechanical Plant’s insolvency case, the court reports. An application asking to declare the company insolvent was placed with the court by OOO Uralpromenergo on August 13, 2015. The plaintiff’s claims come to 5,625,404 RUR. Pervouralsk Pipe Mechanical Plant was founded in 2006. The company is located in Pervouralsk, Sverdlovsk Region, and deals in production and technological treatment of metal goods.

August 18, 2015. Uralvagonzavov Cup’s final games are over in Sverdlovsk Region, Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s press service reports. The cup went to Nizhniy Tagil’s Sputnik Hockey Club, which beat Chelmet from Chelyabinsk 2:1, making up for being defeated by the latter a year earlier. The bronze went to Bars. Awards were given out by Director of Sputnik Hockey Club Takhir Daukayev. Uralvagonzavod Cup is a pre-season championship. The Supreme Hockey League’s regular championship games will start in September. Sputnik’s first match (against Molot-Prikamye) will take place in Perm, and the

August 18, 2015. A Yekaterinburg-based confectionery formerly known as SladCo recently assumed its original name, Konfi, Sergey Gusev, Slavyanka Confectionery Chairman of the Board, told UrBC in an interview. ‘We set up a new company in Yekaterinburg. SladCo remains as a brand, but the business will operate under its original name Konfi. This business is now completely local,’ Gusev said. According to Gusev, prior to the recent sale the company used to be registered in Saint Petersburg, where its former proprietor, Orkla Brands (a daughter enterprise of Norwegian Orkla), was situated. Orlka

August 18, 2015. Deutsche Bank awarded SKB-Bank to praise the latter for the great efficiency of handling foreign currency payment transfers, the bank’s press service reports. According to Deutsche Bank’s estimates, an overwhelming amount of the money orders that were handled automatically by the bank in 2014 came from SKB-Bank. Experts from SKB-Bank’s interbank payments and correspondent account department make sure all the foreign currency transfers comply with international standards, which actually allows for their automatic processing. This, in its turn, both reduces the commission a

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 17, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region directed 110bn RUR to the Russian Federation budgetary system in the first half of 2015, which was 15% (14.5bn RUR) more than a year earlier, Federal Tax Service refers to Deputy Head of the Service’s Sverdlovsk Region division Marina Ryabova as stating in her report. 36bn RUR went to the federal budget (up 26%, or 7.4bn RUR, on a year earlier). Sverdlovsk Region’s consolidated budget received 74bn RUR (up 10.6%, or 7bn RUR, on a year earlier). 31bn RUR came from VAT payments, which exceeded the figures for a year earlier by 22.5%, or

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 17, 2015. The amount of past-due loan payments owed to banks by Sverdlovsk Region-based borrowers came to 27.758bn RUR in the first half of the year and now makes up 7.5% of the overall loan amount to be repaid, the National Collection Service reports. The greatest shares of these non-payments relate to cash loans (15.1%) and credit cards (14.8%), with smaller shares of POS loans (6.4%), car loans (4.6%), and mortgages (1.3%). Sverdlovsk Region’s consolidated loan book has gone down by 4.98% since the beginning of the year and now amounts to 368.8bn RUR. ‘On the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 17, 2015. In Yekaterinburg, the average price of a liter of gasoline went up from 34.23 RUR to 34.38 RUR between August 3 and August 9, Rosstat reports. As of August 9, AI 92 could be had, on average, for 33.44 RUR per liter, AI 95 for 35.64 RUR per liter, and diesel fuel for 34.65 RUR per liter. In fact, gas prices increased in seventy Russian constituency capitals last week; prices went up by 1% or more in five constituencies; for one, the increase was as big as 2.3% in Makhachkala.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 17, 2015. ChTPZ Group’s pipe-manufacturing member enterprises Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant and Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant supplied their customers with 1,070,000,000 kg of steel pipes in the first half of 2015, which was 21.6% more than a year earlier. The increase had to do with more domestic market orders, the company press service reports. The Group sold its customers 537,800,000 kg of welded pipes (+43.5% on the first half of 2014), including 514,000,000 kg of large-diameter pipes (+44% on a year earlier). The increased demand came from the oil and energy

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 17, 2015. Ural Railcar-Building Design Office (a member enterprise of UVZ Corporation) will now repair APE 95 UVZ elastomeric shock absorbers, the company press service reports. The T2 grade absorbers get mounted onto tank cars meant for transportation of valuable or hazardous cargo (GOST 19433-88 Class 3, 4, 5, 8, 9) and onto railcars whose weight exceeds 120,000 kg and main-line locomotives. Both the absorbers and the repair specifications were developed by the design office itself. Until quite recently, the absorbers had to be repaired at the corporation’s head

UrBC, Moscow, August 14, 2015. Russia's advertising market shrank by 16% in the first half of 2015 compared with a year earlier and thus came down to 138bn RUR, Interfax refers to Russia's Communication Agencies Association (AKAR) as stating. The AKAR reports TV advertising, the market's largest segment, is down by 22%, down to 61.1bn RUR to 61.6bn RUR. The number of TV commercials dropped by 21% (down to 60.2bn RUR to 60.7bn RUR) on terrestrial channels and by 52% (down to 920m RUR) on non-terrestrial ones. In the meantime, the online advertising segment increased by 10%, up

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 14, 2015. Sugar grew 2.1% more expensive in Sverdlovsk Region last week (August 4-10), which was the biggest food price increase in the area, Sverdlovskstat reports. In addition to this, the price of sunflower seed oil went up by 0.3%, that of eggs and sweets by 0.2%, and those of caramel, beef, canned meat, bread, sour cream, milk, and sausage went up by 0.1%. Chicken and pork prices remained the same as the week before. At the same time, the prices of lamb, frozen fish, cooked sausage, sterilized milk, cheeses, pasta, and salt went down by 0.1% to 0.2%. The price

UrBC, Moscow, August 14, 2015. On average, Ural Federal District's grocery shoppers spent 455 RUR at a supermarket at a time, which was 3% less than a year earlier, Romir reports. In the country on the whole, the figure is up by 3.2%, up to 559 RUR (the same as last month). Average basket's worth increased by 1.3% in cities with the population of over 1m people, by 1% in cities with 500,000 to 1m residents, and remained the same as a few months ago in cities with under 500,000 people. When broken down by supermarket size, the figures still don't look very different from several

UrBC, Chelyabinsk, August 14, 2015. ChTPZ Group's warehouses in Saint Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, and Novokuznetsk proved one of the top hundred successful suppliers in 2014. This rating was created by B2B Center, an e-trading platform, based on transaction records of their 200,000 registered suppliers, the Group's press service reports. In order to get on the Top100 list, a supplier had to win a noticeable part of the tenders they placed their bids for. The company had to take part in least ten purchasing auctions coordinated by at least three different customers. The

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 14, 2015. Coordinators of the 10th Russia Arms Expo are carrying the Urals‘ Steel Beasts campaign, with a number of cars in exhibition colors and with images of RAE mascots on them cruising Moscow streets for everyone to see, the exhibition's official website states. The ‘beasts‘ will be seen in the streets of the capital on August 13-22. Those willing to join need to make a picturesque and captivating shot of a car and put it on Instagram under #RAE2015. This offer is open for everyone, with ten best photographs to be selected on August 24-25. The winner will