July 9, 2013. Sverdlovsk Region authorities expect about 50,000 people to come to the international industrial exhibition Innoprom 2013 that will be held in Yekaterinburg on July 11-14, Governor Evgeny Kuivashev said at a briefing today. This number of visitors is supposed to let the event fully pay off. 'Well, the exhibition will pay off in any case. From the viewpoint of image investment, this will definitely pay off. On the other hand, if over 50,000 people come and stay for more than just a day, you can multiply this figure by the amounts of money they will spend here,'

July 9, 2013. 10 out of 70 projects on the reconstruction of Yekaterinburg TV tower have made it to the second stage of the contest. The board of jurors' second session will be held on July 10; there are 12 people on the board. The winner will be announced during the Innoprom 2013 exhibition. A board member and Chief Architect of Sverdlovsk Region Vladimir Veniaminov, the jurors' task is to select the project that will make the tower into a symbol of the city. 'At the second stage, we picked out the projects that combine the functional and the ideological components,'

July 9, 2013. The reconstruction of Yekaterinburg Central Stadium will cost 8m RUR. The number of seats will be increased without breaking the historically importan old walls, Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Evgeny Kuivashev said in his interview to Vedomosti. 'We will deepend the spectator zone by 4.5 meters and locate more armchairs there. Besides, about ten more rows of seats will be installed on the side ends. Nobody is going to pull anything down, it's going to be a reconstruction,' the Governor said. Now Sport Engineering was the company that won the tender to do all these

July 9, 2013. An agreement of intent was signed by Sverdlovsk Region Government and OOO SVEZA-Les regarding the construction of a chipboard-making plant in the region. The agreement is expected to be signed on July 11 during the 4th Ural International Industry & Innovations Exhibition/Forum Innoprom 2013, Sverdlovsk Region Government Press Service & Information Department reports. Sverdlovsk Region Industry & Science Minister Vladimir Pinayev says that the consttruction of the plant will begin in the second half of 2013. The enterprise is expected to produce 500,000 m3 of

July 9, 2013. The trainees studying under ChTPZ Group corporate training program called the Future of White Metallurgy presented themselves very successfully at the WorldSkills International-2013, a blue-collar jobs contest in Leipzig, Germany, on July 7. Students from Pervouralsk Metallurgical Vocational School Alexander Litvinenko and Artur Islamov were among the strongest in the Mechatronics category and got the 19th place out of 33, ChTPZ Group's press service reports. 'This is Russia's breakthrough debut in the most prestigious international blue-collar jobs contests that

July 8, 2013. Sverdlovsk Region division of Rospotrebnadzor (the state consumer rights watchdog) inspected TGK-9 in order to check its compliance with the sanitary-epidemiological requirements. The division’s press service reports that the inspection revealed a number of violations in the way the company processed production and consumption waste and other hazardous materials. For one, Novo-Sverdlovskaya Heat & Power Station did not comply with the waste accumulation limits and did not have the contracts and the reports of completion for the waste disposal jobs. So an administrative

July 8, 2013. Sinara Group changed the organizational structure of its daughter enterprise, Sinara-Transport Machines (OOO STM). According to the company’s press service, STM has grand plans on the implementation of transport machine-building projects ahead of it; besides, the market situation is quite favorable for the holding’s development, so on July 1, 2013, two new companies were added to it: OOO STM Management Company (OO UC STM) and OOO STM Trading House (OOO TD STM). The companies were set up by Sinara Group and Sinara-Transport Machines. Sinara-Transport Machines BOD appointed

July 8, 2013. A cooperation agreement will be signed by the Ministry for Industry & Innovational Policies of the Republic of Bashkortostan and Sverdlovsk Region Ministry for Industry & Science; this will be done during the 4th Ural International Industry & Innovations Exhibition/Forum Innoprom 2013. Sverdlovsk Region Government Press Service & Information Administration reports that both parties are interested in expanding their bilateral cooperation, and the agreement will set out the directions of working together in trade, economics, production, and scientific and

July 8, 2013. Yekaterinburg will once again become a venue for international symposiums this year. On July 10-12, 2013, the Global Mind Symposium and a Ural-Africa Russian-African Economic Forum will be held in the Urals’ capital, the press officer of Yekaterinburg Administration reports. The forum will be attended by the representatives of some Black Continent republics: Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Djibouti, Congo, Togo, and Uganda. About 80 voting delegates of the BIE have so far confirmed their coming to the Global Mind Symposium as well; these are ambassador and high-profile diplomats from the

July 8, 2013. As Sinara-Transport Machines has large-scale plans to implement a number of transport machine-building projects and the market situation is quite favorable for the holding’s development, two new companies were added to it on July 1, 2013: OOO STM Management Company (OO UC STM) and OOO STM Trading House (OOO TD STM). The companies were set up by Sinara Group and Sinara-Transport Machines, STM press service reports. Sinara-Transport Machines BOD appointed Evgeniy Gritsenko the holding’s Director-General. Gritsenko used to be First Deputy DG and Sinara Group Executive Director. The

July 5, 2013. An audit aimed at checking the company’s compliance with the European Directive 97/23/EG and AD 2000 W0/TRD 100 technical requirements for the production of pressure-operated pipes and certification audit for compliance with the ЕС №305/2011 regulations as of March 9, 2011 (replacing the European Directive 89/106/ЕЕС for the production of construction pipes) was completed successfully at Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant (a member of ChTPZ Group). The plant has already got certified for compliance with the European Directive 89/106/ЕЕС earlier, the enterprise’s press service reports.

July 5, 2013. Remote payment services keep ‘luring’ customers away from the brick-and-mortar branches. Being aware of the fact that one can now handle all of the bank transactions via one’s phone and computer motivated users to switch to e-banking en masse, VUZ-Bank’s website states. The increase in the number of e-banking and m-banking users was not left unheeded by VUZ-Bank, which offers customers its e-Life and Life-Mobile services – a common resource for all the member banks of Life Financial Group. An e-banking option is now automatically included in the package when a customer gets a

July 5, 2013. A museum dedicated to the history of Seversky metallurgical industry workers’ camping site was opened at Gorodok Solntsa, a children’s summer camp run by Seversky Pipe Plant, the enterprise’s press service reports. ‘The idea to piece together all the exhibits relating to Gorodok Solntsa’s fifty-year history took root in the mind of long-service employees about a year ago, when they visited the camp during the anniversary celebrations. Workers from Severskaya Blast Furnace Museum decided to make this idea a reality and suggested setting up a traveling exhibition,’ the press

July 5, 2013. Ural Federal University students came 16th in the ACM-ICPC World Computer Programming Championship in Saint Petersburg. The team of students from Saint Petersburg National University of Information Technologies, Mechanics & Optics won, Yekaterinburg’s official website states. 119 teams from 36 different countries took part in the final rounds of the championship. Russia put forward 15 teams. The UFU was represented by students Olga Soboleva, Yegor Shchelkonogov, Oleg Dolgorukov, and their coach, a post-graduate student from UFU Algebra & Discrete Mathematics Department

July 5, 2013. A special training lab with simulators for hot-roll mill operators was launched at Sinara Pipe Plant (SinTZ, a member of Pipe Metallurgical Company). The lab, fitted with the entire package of software and equipment needed, is located in the administrative building of Pipe-Drawing Department 2 (V-2), the enterprise’s press service says. The new lab has six simulators that imitate the working conditions of operators of sizing mills, reeling machines, piercing mills, and three types of longitudinal rolling mills. The devices completely emulate the hot-roll production line of the

July 4, 2013. In January-May 2013, the natural population growth in Yekaterinburg was 1,493 people. 8,179 people were born and 6,686 people passed away. As for Sverdlovsk Region, 20,040 people were born and 20,408 people passed away, so the natural decline in the population was 368 people. As of January 1, 2013, Yekaterinburg’s population stood at 1,429,400 people, which is 46,200 (3.3%) more than this figure was at the end of the All-Russian Census of 2010. According to the data provided by Sverdlovskstat, the natural decline in the population in Sverdlovsk Region was 768 people: 14,677

July 4, 2013. Yekaterinburg Oktyabrsky District court pronounced its sentence upon a 29-year-old Alexei Zagainov, who had tried to avoid paying customs duties when importing 9m RUR worth of jewelry to Russia. The press service of the Ural Investigative Division of Russia’s Investigative Committee reports that the accused bought a number of diamonds (total weight: 195.34 carats), sapphires (total weight: 832.51 carats), over 9,000 cut non-precious stones, and a necklace at Bangkok Gems & Jewelry Fair in Thailand in September 2012. He decided not to declare the import of these purchases

July 4, 2013. 30.2% less housing (-775,000 sq m) was commissioned in Ural Federal District in the first three months of 2013 than in the first quarter of 2012, Rosstat reports. Housing construction process was most dynamic in Tyumen Region (including Khanty-Mansiysky and Yamalo-Nenetsky Autonomous Districts) and in Chelyabinsk Region. 370,300 and 251,200 sq m worth of housing was commissioned there, respectively. The share of Ural Federal District in the total amount of housing commissioned in Russia was 7.7%. Private builders put up a total of 338,100 sq m worth of detached houses. All in

July 4, 2013. Sverdlovsk Region division of the Federal Service of Court Officers declared 21,176 local residents travel-banned, as they owe a total of 11.519bn RUR to private individuals and/or organizations. All in all, the local residents have 39.373bn RUR worth of debts that are now being processed by the Service, its website states. The bans on going abroad made 609 locals pay their debts – these amounted to 178.2m RUR, the Service reports. A lot of these debtors are people who don’t pay their children’s alimony: these come to 7,718 people out of all those debtors who have been

July 4, 2013. As of July 1, 2013, a square meter of real estate on Yekaterinburg’s existing homes market came to 70,467 RUR. Ural Chamber of Real Estate reports that this figure has remained virtually the same for the last four weeks and only fluctuated within a range of 0.1%. In fact, the figure hasn’t changed much since the beginning of the year. The increase was about 0.5%, and most homes were sold within four to four and a half months of being put up to sale. Over the last month, prices have been going both up and down in the different segments of this market. Downtown, the city’s most