January 28, 2013. Yekaterinburg’s retail trade turnover came to 610bn RUR in 2012. For the first time in the city’s history, the 600-bn RUR figure was actually exceeded. This sum comes to as many as twenty annual budgets of the city, the official city web portal states. The retail trade turnover rose by 8.8% against 2011. Over the course of one year, 537 new retail outlets were opened in Yekaterinburg, and 100 of those were actually built from scratch. The trading network expanded by 298 new facilities, including 100 grocery shops and 166 stores selling non-food items, the portal announcement

January 28, 2013. The first mechatronics WorldSkills Russia championship came to an end in Pervouralsk. Students from Pervouralsk Metallurgical College, who scored the maximum number of points (82), were declared the winners in the contest, Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant’s press service reports. The championship was held on January 22-24 at ChTPZ Group’s training center whose facilities meet all the mechatornics championship standards. Seven teams from five parts of Russia (Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Chelyabinsk Region, Sverdlovsk Region, and Khanty-Mansiysky Autonomous Region) took part in

January 28, 2013. Sverdlovsk Commuting Company is launching a pilot project on cashless fare payment in January 2013. The service will be available on the commuter trains traveling within Sverdlovsk Region and is a part of the company’s customer service enhancement program, Sverdlovsk Commuting Company’s press officer reports. Passengers can enjoy the benefits of the cashless payment on the electric trains using the stationary POS terminals at the booking offices. All the tellers have already been trained and can help passengers pay with a bank card if necessary. At the end of this cashless

January 28, 2013. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development was successfully certified for compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) recently. Visa and MasterCard have already confirmed that the UBRD’s cards meet the international standard, which can be proved by the certificate the bank was given on December 31, 2012. The PCIDSS certificate proves that the security and protection during the processing and storage of the UBRD cardholders’ personal data meets the highest international standards. ‘This great level of security was made possible due to

January 25, 2013. This year, Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant’s personnel training center is planning to have 3,800 employees undergo professional development programs. This is a record-setting number, as last year, only 3,600 workers were trained; in 2011, the figure was 3,150, Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s press service reports. The number of workers who improved on their professional skills rose from 11% to 17% of all the staff. So now the metal casters, press operators, pump unit operators and other workers who underwent production and technical development programs have been entitled to higher

January 25, 2013. In 2013, 5.242bn RUR will be invested in Sverdlovsk Region’s agricultural industry, the regional government’s Press Service & Information Administration reports. 2.67bn RUR will be directed to issuing short-term loans needed to do all the seasonal agricultural jobs and to process the agricultural raw materials; 1.97bn RUR will be used for investment loans needed to buy vehicles and machinery, to build, re-build, and upgrade the crop-raising and animal husbandry facilities and to develop the infrastructure and logistics for the crop and animal produce markets, including

January 25, 2013. In 2012, 97,348 new cars were sold in Yekaterinburg last year, which was 14%, or 12,278 cars more than in 2011. In December 2012, 8,277 vehicles were sold, which fell short of the number for December 2011 by 3% or 209 cars, Auto-Dealer Yekaterinburg reports. Lada is still the best-selling car on the market, even though its sales actually declined by 56 automobiles compared to a year earlier. As a result, the share of Russian cars on the Yekaterinburg market came to 15% in 2012 compared with 21% in 2010 and 17% in 2011. Once again, Chevrolet proved the most popular foreign

January 25, 2013. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development (UBRD) adopted a new policy on setting exchange rates for its cash-based foreign exchange transactions: the spreads (the difference between the buying and selling price) was reduced by 0.33 RUR against the dollar (compared with 0.4 RUR) and by 0.48 RUR against the euro, the bank’s press officer reports. ‘This is above all beneficial for our customers,’ says UBRD Foreign Currency Transactions Director Ruslan Khamzin. According to Khamzin, the new exchange rate policy will decrease the bank’s returns on every single

January 25, 2013. A large-scale Baptism Day diving event was organized at the sports facility of Morzhi Sinary that is sponsored by Sinarsky Pipe Plant (a part of Pipe Metallurgical Company/TMK). The event was attended by over 3,000 people of all ages, including the plant workers and the residents of Kamensk-Uralsky with their children. The full-time Morzhi Sinary Club members and some voluntary assistants among the plant workers cleared the road and the site in advance, set up some lighting and made the ice hole in the River Kamenka with some warning signs. They also built the stairs to get

January 24, 2013 According to the interactive announcement board at Yekaterinburg’s Koltsovo Airport, Flydubai Airlines’ flight arriving from Dubai to Yekaterinburg is now delayed by three hours. The original arrival time of the flight from the United Arab Emirates was 4:10 PM local time on January 23, but now the arrival has been postponed till 7:10 PM due to bad weather conditions.

January 24, 2013 As part of Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s technical upgrades program, the assembly of a 75-ton pouring crane began at the head plant’s open-hearth department. The use of the crane will help to reduce the workload of the cast-house. What is more, the installation of modern equipment will allow the company considerably to improve the employees’ working conditions, Uralvagonzavod’s press service reports. The new crane, manufactured in Ukraine, came to replace its worn-out and obsolete counterpart made as early as 1969. This is a specialized kind of a pouring crane that has two

January 24, 2013 Governor Evgeny Kuivashev allocated 500m RUR to build the Titanium Valley special economic zone; the project is now being presented in Davos, Governor of Sverdlovsk Region’s Information Politics Department reports. At the moment, the construction of the main natural gas pipeline (which will be 8.5 km long and 500mm wide) began in the Titanium Valley; also, the construction headquarters are being set up, and a 6-5km-long fence is being built. In addition, some of the facilities are about to be connected to the electric power supply networks, and a 110/10 substation with the

January 24, 2013 More than 250,000 people entered Russia through Koltsovo Airport’s passport control point in 2012, which is 30% more than in 2011. This increase has to do with a greater number of flights being operated as well as with the transit travel of foreigners, Deputy Head of Russia’s Federal Migration Service’s Sverdlovsk Region division Yuri Bezborodov announced at a press conference. 303,00 foreign residents registered with the migration authorities in Sverdlovsk Region last year against 270,000 people a year earlier, so the increase amounted to 12%. ‘Last year, as for the

January 24, 2013 Governor Evgeny Kuivashev and a group of other Russian delegates headed by Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev are now taking part in the World Economic Forum that took off on January 23 in Davos, Switzerland, Governor of Sverdlovsk Region’s Information Politics Department reports. The Russian delegation intends to present Yekaterinburg’s application for hosting the World Universal Exhibition EXPO 2020 at the forum. The forum is attended by Vice Premier and Head of Russia’s EXPO 2020 Application Promotion Committee Arkady Dvorkovitch and the Director-General of the EXPO 2020

January 23, 2013. Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant (ChTZ) is going to complete the fulfillment of its Byelorussian contract this January when it delivers the last 15 bulldozers out of 100 vehicles ordered by the customer, Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s press service reports. Now in accordance with the tender the tractor manufacturers won in late 2012, the company was to ship a number of swamp tractors and road-building vehicles in three months’ time, and the company was able to meet these requirements. Some of the bulldozers that have already been shipped are being used for the hydraulic engineering

January 23, 2013. The January issue of the metallurgical trade magazine Metallosnabzheniye I Sbyt carried a rating of the country’s leading manufacturers and suppliers for ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgical produce in the second half of 2012. The traditional rating of the Russian metallurgy sector’s best producers and traders was based on the customer questionnaires, surveys of the metal market experts, and a multi-faceted analysis of the companies’ activities. The best enterprises were singled out with the help of the following criteria: business development dynamics, shipment volumes,

January 23, 2013. Sinara Pipe Plant (SinTZ), a member of Pipe Metallurgical Company/TMK, is now investing in the technological upgrades of its company firefighting team in order to improve the working conditions and reinforce the professional skills of the firemen, TMK’s press officer reports. Thanks to some help from the plant’s management, the firefighters got 10 new Omega-1 breathing apparatuses, 5 life-saving apparatuses, and 7 Yermak-18 knapsack tanks. What is more, in 2012, eight firefighters were trained through a first-level rescue rangers course at the Federal Firefighting Service’s

January 23, 2013. The federal retail supermarket chain Lenta is about to start building its outlet in Nizhniy Tagil. A supermarket with the total area of 12,000 sq m will be located in the district of Alexandrovsky, next to Uralsky Ave. The opening is scheduled for the fall of 2013, the company reports. ‘Nizhniy Tagil will become Sverdlovsk Region’s first city to get this chain’s supermarket. This is one of the region’s largest cities with high salaries, so it has good potential as well as very moderate federal players penetration rate,’ the company feels. Lenta, which runs a chain of

January 23, 2013. In 2012, Koltsovo Airport (a member of Regional Airports Holding) offered its services to 3,783,069 passengers, which was 12.7% more than in 2011, Regional Airports Management Company’s Strategic Communications Department reports. The greatest increase (23.4%) was registered in international flights: 1,849,053 people flew internationally, while 1,934 passengers used the company’s domestic flights. All in all, 21,728 takeoff and landing operations were performed at Koltsovo in 2012; this was 7.9% more than a year earlier. Freight forwarding turnover went up as well: the

January 22, 2013. A charity event called Soft Hockey was held at Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation’s Ice Sports Palace. The match played by Sputnik team (sponsored by the corporation) was attended by supporters who brought along some soft toys for the children living in the orphanages of Nizhniy Tagil, so, at the final whistle, they threw these onto the ice, the corporation’s press service reports. The match with the Tver hockey club was prolonged with an overtime, and Denis Guriev got a bullet in the fourth minute of the overtime period. The Sputnik forward snatched at