UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 7, 2015. MegaFon, a telecommunications provider, completed a full network check to prepare the system for extra workload during the International Industrial Exhibition Innoprom 2015, the company press service reports. On July 8-11, all the equipment will be tuned in to deal with extra large amounts of voice and Internet traffic at the exhibition site and in the visitor accommodation areas. ‘The upcoming event will bring representatives of the industrial companies from all over the world to Yekaterinburg as usual. We did some extra network capacity redistribution in

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 7, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region taxpayers owed the state 136.7bn RUR (0.4%) more in January-May 2015 compared with January-May 2014; the overall figure reached 31.8bn RUR, Sverdlovsk Region division of the Federal Tax Service reports. ‘More than 265,000 payment requests have been sent to taxpayers since the start of the year; these amount to 13.276bn RUR altogether. A third of these payment requests are related to property tax; these amount to 0.5% of the total figure,’ the division says. The tax authorities managed to collect the tax debts in full (including all sorts of

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 7, 2015. Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s member enterprises are offering summer job opportunities to teenagers, their press service reports. Omsk-based Uraltransmash coordinates summer practice for a hundred high school and college students. The plant joined the Summer 2015 Project coordinated by the city council in order to provide local teenagers with summer jobs. The plant will welcome, among others, 57 employees’ children and students from sponsored School 122. Young people aged 14 to 15 will get 4,400 RUR for one month’s work, those aged 16 to 17 will get 6,000

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 7, 2015. A group of former ChTPZ Group’s students who have completed their army service in Gorniy Shchit, Sverdlovsk Region, was discharged today. This is the fifth time students on the company’s corporate training program called the Future of White Metallurgy have come back to Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant (the Group’s member enterprise) to work there. ‘These young men proved excellent students and good soldiers. I am happy to find they see their future at the plant and I am positive they will become great professionals and the kind of workers our current students will

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 7, 2015. Sverdlovsk Railways handled 10.95m tons of cargo in Jun 2015, which was 1.1% less than a year earlier, and 365,200,000 kg of cargo a day on average, Russian Railways’ press service reports. This June’s cargo turnover went down by 0.3% compared with a year earlier and reached 15.81bn ton-kilometers. 67.1m tons of cargo were shipped via Sverdlovsk Railways in the first half of 2015, which exceeded the figures for a year earlier by 0.9%. The shipment figures rose most for oil and mineral products (by 2.9m tons, or +15.4%) and dropped most for building materials

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 7, 2015. Around a quarter of working-age refugees from Ukraine haven’t been able to find a job in Sverdlovsk Region yet, head of Russia-Ukraine Friendship House, an NGO, Petr Shcherbina, said at a press conference. ‘There are currently over 8,500 Ukrainian refugees in the area. Only about 500, mostly the elderly and the disabled, are now staying at temporary shelters. Some 6,000 people of working age are on the lookout for jobs, and around 75% of them have found one,’ he said. Head of Nelegalov.net Natalya Tagiltseva, these data account for all those who are

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 6, 2015. The prices of goods and services went up by 6.8% in Sverdlovsk Region compared with the start of the year and by 14.8% compared with June 2014, Sverdlovskstat reports. However, prices went down by 0.01% in June against May; for one, food items became 0.05% less expensive. On the other hand, the price of alcohol went up by 0.5% while non-food items and services grew 0.3% and 0.01% more expensive, respectively.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 6, 2015. The number of the unemployed came to 151,607 people in Sverdlovsk Region in June 2015, which was nearly 30,000 more than a year earlier, Sverdlovskstat reports. In fact, the figure dropped against the earlier months in April and May yet rose by as much as 700 people in June. Still, this number is still 2,500 people below the levels of January 2015 and 4,300 people below those of March 2015, when the overall number of the unemployed stood at the year’s high. The overall unemployment rate thus remains the same as in the previous two months and stands at 6.6%,

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 6, 2015. The net profit Kamensk Uralsky Foundry Plant/KULZ (a member enterprise of Uralvagonzavod Corporation) made in 2014 amounted to over 223m RUR, the corporation’s press service reports. It was decided in the course of the annual shareholder meeting that most of the money (190m RUR) would be directed to retooling and upgrading of the plant’s production facilities. Dividends will be paid out to preference shareholders. ‘The shareholders also elected the Board of Directors (the plant’s Director-General Anatoly Barabanov being one of the BOD members) and the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 6, 2015. The number of retail shops in Yekaterinburg went up by 233 new units in 2014, including 95 outlets in newly constructed buildings. According to the city council’s press service, Yekaterinburg’s trade sector is one of Russia’s most developed ones on the market. The city has more per capita shopping space (1,340 m2 per 1,000 people) than any other large Russian city, including Moscow and Saint Petersburg. ‘The Urals’ capital has a very extensive caf and restaurant network. There are 1,424 of them operating in Yekaterinburg at the moment, with overall room for

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 6, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region division of Rospotrebnadzor (the state consumer rights watchdog) checked retail prices of vital medications to discover that these increased by 8.9% compared with December 2014, the division head Igor Trofimov announced at a press conference in Yekaterinburg. He said prices went up by an average of 7.2% in the country overall and by 8.3% in Ural Federal District. ‘However, prices are now a bit lower than in April 2015; they dropped by 0.4% in Sverdlovsk Region and by 0.3% in Ural Federal District and remained more or less the same in the

UrBC, Moscow, July 3, 2015. Russia’s mortgage lending market declined by 40.9% (down to 371.279bn RUR) in January-May 2015 compared with January-May 2014; the figures apply to ruble mortgages, Central Bank reports. The overall volume of foreign currency mortgages dropped by 53.7%, down to 1.475bn RUR. As of June 1, the borrowers still had 3.473 trillion RUR left to pay, including 33.281bn RUR worth of past-due payments.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 3, 2015. The average amount of time it takes to sell an apartment on Yekaterinburg existing homes market rose from 3.5 to 6.5 months since the start of the year, Ural Real Estate Chamber’s analytical report states. According to Rosreyestr, the overall number of estate deals was 15% lower in the first half of 2015 than in the first half of 2014, while the market supply reached its all-time high: there are currently over 11,300 apartments offered for sale in the chamber’s database. This has already resulting in dropping housing prices: these have gone down by 2.8%

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 3, 2015. ChTPZ Group is celebrating Metallurgist’s Day with a motto that reads, ‘Five Years in White’, the company press service reports. The Group’s representatives explain that five years ago, the concept of White Metallurgy was presented to Vladimir Putin at the opening ceremony of Vysota 239 Department. Vysota 239 is now a recognized national brand. ‘Symbolically, exactly five new facilities have been set up within these five years, namely, Vysota 239, Iron Ozone 32 (a steel-smelting facility), OCTG Finishing Center, the Future of White Metallurgy Educational

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 3, 2015. ChTPZ Group’s warehouse facility Uraltrubostal delivered 40,000 kg of tubes and pipes for the construction of the fourth automobile bridge across the Yenissei River in Krasnoyarsk, the company press service reports. ‘Under the terms of the contract, Sibmost, the general contractor, received a set of 530-mm large diameter pipes and 89-mm and 180-mm weldless pipes. The difficulty of the task was in having to ship a range of different pipe types over a short period of time,’ the press service says. The whole structure will comprise a six-lane automobile bridge

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 3, 2015. Uralvagonzavod Corporation/UVZ plans to make a presentation on prospective upgrades of its member enterprise ChTZ Uraltrac the key feature of its 500m2 stand at the Innoprom Exhibition this year. The company press service says the stand will give visitors a chance to see the company’s potential for making road-building and utility vehicles, pipe-laying tractors, and other machines. For one, the plant’s latest bulldozer B11.8000, assembled for the first time last year, will be on display. ‘This year’s slogan is Russian Vehicles for Russian Projects! If local

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 2, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region is currently the Russian constituency with the greatest number of residents who temporarily aren’t allowed to leave the country because their debts amount to more than 10,000 RUR, Sequoia Credit Consolidation reports. There are over 399,000 debtors in the area right now (8.9% of the local population). 30% of non-payers have overdue cash loan repayments; 17% haven’t repaid their credit card debts; 20% failed to make their car loan payments; 13% have POS loan debts; and 20% have failed to make their mortgage payments. The biggest average loan

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 2, 2015. Only 3% of Sverdlovsk Region households actually rate their housing facilities as ‘excellent’, Sverdlovskstat reports. 55% rated them as ‘fair’, 32% as ‘good’, and 10% as ‘poor’. As of late 2014, 85.5% of households were apartments and 14.4% were private houses, that is, 92.4% of urban households were apartments and 7.5% were private houses, whereas for the rural households, the ratio was 48.1% to 51.9%. 0.1% of households lived in communal apartments, and some 3% of households had a second home/property. Housing bills went up by 12.4% in 2014 and came, on

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 2, 2015. Yekaterinburg pawnshops have been getting 10% to 30% more customers over the last few months, the market players informed UrBC. ‘The current economic crisis caused the customer traffic to go up by 30%. People need money especially badly right now. Most often, they come when their wages haven’t been paid out to them in time or when their advance payments come to an end. These clients tend to pawn their gold jewellery, laptops, and mobile phones. Apple seems to be a particularly common brand lately: Apple products are not cheap, so some good money can be had

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 2, 2015. The latest issue if Technowars, Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s company magazine, carried a feature on modern technologies that could turn a young recruit into a perfect soldier, the corporation’s press service reports. ‘One way for Homo Sapiens to keep evolving is through genetic interference. Are we in for a brave new world or for a dark dystopia? The article on creating a perfect human dwells upon modern DNA technologies and gives experts’ opinions on biotechnological research involving the human genome,’ the press service says. Two more articles (A Modern