February 20, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is going to consider Severnaya Agricultural Firm’s insolvency application submitted by Elektrotechnologii. The application was placed with the court on February 16. The defendant was founded on November 14, 2007 and is now managed by Oleg Khan. The company is now involved in a number of lawsuits as a defendant, with the total amount of claims reaching 1.3bn RUR. The debts are to be paid by Severnaya itself, Uralbroiler Yekateirnburg, and other businesses owned by Oleg and Olessya Khan. Sberbank of Russia seized all of the agricultural

February 20, 2015. ChTPZ Group and seven Kazakhstan-based industrial schools signed cooperation agreements under the auspices of ROST-ORLEU Association, the Group’s press service reports. The ceremony took place at Karaganda Polytechnic School; the papers were signed by the Association’s current members and heads of seven more educational establishments: North Kazakhstan Vocational Teachers’ Training College, Petropavlovsk Railway Transport School, Atyrau Polytechnic School, Kazakhmys Polytechnic School, Shaktinsk Technological School, Bolashak/Karaganda Up-to-Date Education School, and

February 19, 2015. Nizhniy Tagil’s Sputnik, a hockey club sponsored by Uralvagonzavod Corporation, is now eligible to enter the Supreme Hockey League’s play off. ‘This was possible due to beating the league’s front-runner, Saryarkoy from Kazakhstan. Sputnik was 24th out of 26 teams last year, but this time its overall ranking is one of the best,’ the corporation’s press service says. Chairman of Sputnik’s board of trustees Alexei Zharich congratulated the team and their manager on the season’s victory and said he hoped they would fight hard in the play off. ‘Following the last season’s

February 19, 2015. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development added a new option to its range of e-banking services: customers can now view the schedule of interest payment or capitalization for their remotely controlled savings deposits (namely, Profitable, Advantageous, Manageable, and Paycheck), the bank’s press service reports. The schedule provides dates on which the interest is paid, the interest rate for the given deposit period, and the amount of interest paid. This new option means the bank’s customers can check how much profit they’ve made and when the next payment is due at

February 19, 2015. The turnover of goods at Yekaterinburg’s Koltsovo Airport’s customs points declined by 20% this year compared with the beginning of 2014, the Customs’ head Sergey Abrosimov announced at a press conference. He added the international passenger traffic shrank even more drastically, by as much as 35%. ‘Nevertheless, we expect the passenger traffic figures to recover by the middle of the year, primarily thanks to travelers going on their vacations, as migrant workers have remained a considerable part of the overall international passenger statistics,’ he pointed out. As for

February 19, 2015. 13% of Yekaterinburg businesses are planning to offer their employees a pay raise this year, HeadHunter’s research team states. Under 5% of companies intend to reduce their workers’ pay, and 45% expect their staff salaries to remain unchanged. However, even those employers that do plan on pay raises are only prepared for this raise to be under 10%. Quite a few companies (36%) say they haven’t made up their minds yet and will have to play it by ear. Interestingly, middle-level managers are the ones at risk as far as a pay decrease is concerned: if a business does go through

February 19, 2015. The arrears of wages went up by 22.8%, or by 457m RUR in January 2015, Rossiyskaya Gazeta refers to Rosstat as stating. As of February 1, 2015, Russian employers owed salaries and wages to 71,000 workers. For one, the arrears rose by 14 times due to the fact that money was not delivered from the government budget funds in time. The overall amount of wage arrears came to less than 1% of the consolidated one month’s pay of a working citizen. 44% of this money is owed by employers in the processing sector, 15% by those in the construction industry, 11% by those in the

February 18, 2015. Sinara Group is going to build a new highway in Volgograd Region to connect Moskovskaya St in Krasnoslobodsk to Vtoraya Pyatiletka in Sredneakhtubinsk. The highway will reduce the time it takes to get from the bridge across the Volga to Bukatin Lug (a new district of Krasnoslobodsk that Sinara Development is putting up there), Sinara Group’s PR Center reports. The highway construction project is part of the government program on the development of Volgograd Region’s transport infrastructure in 2014-2016. The project documentation was prepared by Sinara Development within

February 18, 2015. Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s experts met with the representatives of Rift Valley Railways, a company that maintains the railways in Kenya and Rwanda. According to the corporation’s press service, the African company’s delegates paid a visit to the company’s head plant in Nizhniy Tagil in order to talk over their cooperation prospects. Uralvagonzavod might, for example, compete for the contract for 480 meter-gauge railway platforms. The delegates also took an inertest in Uralcryomash’s tank containers. ‘The terms of delivery we offer, as well as our prices and approach to

February 18, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region-based businesses’ revenues rose by 13.6% in January 2015 compared with a year earlier, Sverdlovskstat reports. For one, the processing sector’s revenues went up by 30.4%, the agricultural, hunting, and timber industries’ revenues went up by 28.5%, and the construction sector’s revenues increased by 8.4%. At the same time, the revenues in the production and distribution of electric power, natural gas, and water and in the education sector declined by 5.4% and 2.5%, respectively.

February 18, 2015. Russian air carriers’ overall passenger traffic might drop by 7.6% in 2015, Russia’s Economic Development Ministry’s updated forecast states. Domestic air travel could shrink due to the weakening ruble and the decrease in the population’s actual income as well as growing airplane leasing expenses. As for last year, air traffic actually rose by 10.2% compared with 2013. The ministry also says that Russians’ falling incomes will result in smaller trade turnover (-5.9% for food items and -10.2% for non-food items). The average household’s private consumption will also go down

February 18, 2015. 305,800 m2 worth of new housing got commissioned in Sverdlovsk Region in January 2015; this was 5.9 times more than in January 2014. According to Sverdlovskstat, the figure includes 143,800 m2 worth of private housing construction, which exceeds the figures for a year earlier by 2.8 times.

February 17, 2015. Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s head plant looked at the performance results of its voluntary neighborhood watch team that was set up one year ago, the corporation’s press service reports. ‘1,253 workers from nearly all of the head plant’s divisions joined the watch over the course of the year. Their shifts amounted to 2,100 hours altogether, with an average of twenty people per shift. The voluntary police assistants are foremen, engineers, personnel managers, heads of departments, offices, and divisions, economists, technicians, press operators, janitors, adjusters, millers,

February 17, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court ruled that OAO Pnevmostroymachine should undergo bankruptcy proceedings. On December 5, 2014, a claim was placed with the court by Raifffeisenbank; the plaintiff insisted that Pnevmostroymachine be declared insolvent due to its 29m-ruble debt; the claim was called off after a peace settlement. However, on December 12 the defendant itself submitted an insolvency application. According to the files relating to the case, the company admitted owing 2,357,312,913 RUR to its creditors as of November 1, 2014. The company’s current assets amount

February 17, 2015. The deteriorating economic circumstances have resulted in considerably more office space available for rent in Yekaterinburg. The share of Class A offices to let rose to 23% in the last quarter of 2014, that of Class B+ offices went up from 2% to 11%. The share of vacant Class C offices kept shrinking between December 2013 and September 2014 but increased to 14% in the fourth quarter of the year, Ural Chamber of Real Estate reports. Around 15% of good quality offices are available for rent in Yekaterinburg at the moment and are advertised on the estate market. Experts

February 17, 2015. Ural Airlines is launching a special offer on its Yekaterinburg-Tel Aviv flights: a round trip can now be booked for €129; the tickets are already available for purchase. Special rates hold for flights to be operated between March 18 and May13, 2015 (excluding airport fees and airline charges). The airline reduced the fuel fee for this flight by €36 (one-way trip) and €72 (round trip). Ural Airlines will operate direct flights from Yekaterinburg to Tel Aviv every Wednesday starting March 18, 2015. The flight will be performed on Airbus liners that have both economy and

February 17, 2015. Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant and Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant (pipe-making member enterprises of ChTPZ Group) supplied 2,073,000,000 kg of pipe products to their customers in 2014, which was 395,000,000 kg (23.6%) more than in 2013, the Group’s press service reports. This increase has to do with more shipments on large-diameter pipes onto the home market and more shipments of OCTGs onto the CIS markets. The pipe manufacturing enterprises delivered 1,038,000,000 kg of welded pipes to their customers in the twelve months of 2014; this was 38% more than a year earlier. The

February 16, 2015. Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant (ChTZ-Uraltrac, a member enterprise of Uralvagonzavod Corporation) is going to sell its customers two unusually colored 2B10M bulldozers. The company has produced green, grey, blue, and even red vehicles before. These two are going to be entirely dull black, with only the plant’s logo at the front and the model’s details on the cabin visible. This kind of coating was originally meant for an exhibition, yet the demand for the vehicles is so high that the customers agreed to get the black bulldozers now instead of waiting for some differently colored

February 16, 2015. A criminal lawsuit involving Valentina Rossomagina, a manager from Hoff (a supermarket), will be heard at Yekaterinburg Verkh-Isetsky District court on February 16. The woman is charged with negligent homicide (Article 190 (part 2) of the Russian Federation Criminal Code). According to Sverdlovsk Region Court’s press service, a cupboard collapsed on a three-year-old child, who later died in hospital as a result of the injury. As it turned out, the cupboard had not been fixed to the wall.

February 16, 2015. Orenburg Airlines (a member enterprise of Aeroflot) backed out of its decision to operate flights from Yekaterinburg to London (UK), New York (USA), and Toronto (Canada), RIA Novosti refers to Rosaviation as saying. The air carrier no longer offers 24 flights altogether, including those from Moscow to Miami, Liège, and Varadero, and from Saint Petersburg to Cancun. It was announced earlier that UTair also decided not to operate any flights from Yekaterinburg to Sanya (China).