December 10, 2012 A special session initiated by Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation was coordinated within the framework of Russia’s Transport 2012 Forum. During the session, both Russian and foreign manufacturers, government officials, and forwarding companies representatives talked about the advantages of railway vehicles and about their future, the Corporation’s press service reports. Bombardier Transportation Senior Director for New Business Development Flavio Canetti gave a speech on the innovational and efficient solutions for the Moscow Underground. A lot of the

December 10, 2012 Sverdlovsk Region’s Vice Premier Sergey Zyranov and Deputy Director-General of the Housing Construction Development Fund Denis Filippov held a round table discussion on the multi-faceted development of over 20 hectares of land in the Village of Cherdantsevo; these land patches have been allocated by the authorities for housing construction, Sverdlovsk Region Government’s Press Service & Information Administration reports. Under the Fund’s requirements, the land allotment is to be used for putting up low-rise economy class apartment buildings up to three storeys high;

December 7, 2012 An international conference called ‘Foundry Council 6’ is held in Yekaterinburg on December 6-7, 2012. The agenda of the conference covers coming up with some recommendations for the foundry industry, looking into its development potential, methods of quality control, equipment upgrades, and getting acquainted with the most advanced coating, thermal treatment, and mechanical treatment technologies, Sverdlovsk Region Government’s Press Service & Information Administration reports. Over 200 experts from Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Slovenia, Croatia,

December 7, 2012 Oblkommunenergo is setting up a logistics center on the premises of Artemovsky power station for the delivery of fuel, machinery, and materials onto its divisions in 43 local towns, the enterprise’s PR Department reports. Experts say the location of both Artemovsky and the power station warehouses meets all the necessary conditions for creating such a center: there are railways there, as well as specialized equipment; what is more, cranes and loaders will be introduced soon. These warehouses are already being used to store the fuel for the company’s divisions and other

December 7, 2012 A group of delegates from the Economy Facilitation Department of Saxony, Germany, arrived in Sverdlovsk Region in order to look at the cooperation options relating to the use of resource-efficient production technologies, scientific research findings, and R&D achievements in machine-building, Sverdlovsk Region Press Service & Information Administration reports. ‘These delegates are representatives of machine-building plants and enterprises with experience in welding, sheet-metalworking, and metal treatment that are quite interested in doing business with us. We have

December 7, 2012 Sverdlovsk Region authorities reconsidered their spending on the special economic zone Titanium Valley. At the moment, this spending amounts to 16.8bn RUR, a half of which is to be allocated from the regional budget, while the other half is to be provided for from the federal funds, Governor Evgeny Kuivashev announced at a briefing today. ‘Out of the 8bn RUR we spend, some 4bn RUR will pay off: these are investments in things like electric mains and heating and power stations. In 13 to 18 years, this will pay off through end user rates. The money for these projects will be

December 7, 2012 In the third quarter of 2012, the retail deposits volume in Ural Federal District-based banks rose by 5.8bn RUR and came to 344.2bn RUR (against 1.3bn RUR increase in Q3’11). In relative terms, the growth in Q3’12 was 1.7% — the same as in Russia on the whole (compared with 0.4% in the third quarter of 2011), The Deposit Insurance Agency State Corporation reports. All in all, the local banks’ deposits volume rose by 28.5bn RUR in the nine months of 2012 (compared with 18.6bn RUR in January-September 2011). The daily increase went down to 62.7m RUR in Q3 against 227m RUR a day

December 6, 2012. This year, seven investment projects on reconstructing and building the local engineering infrastructure are being implemented in Sverdlovsk Region. 136.85m RUR has been allocated from the regional budget to finance the local cities’ work on this, Sverdlovsk Region Government’s Press Service & Information Administration refers to deputy minister Andrei Kislitsin as saying today. Now starting July 2012, such projects became a part of the regional multi-purpose communal housing services system modernization and development program; the program aims to help the local cities

December 6, 2012. It was decided at Koltsovo Airport’s extraordinary general meeting that the company’s Director-General Evgeny Chudnovsky should leave before the end of his term, the company’s information transparency server states. 99.8% of voting shareholders seconded this decision. This means that Chudnovsky will have to resign on December 31, 2012. The airport management authority has been handed over to Regional Airports Management Company.

December 6, 2012. Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation’s head plant came up with a report on the preliminary results of the year’s performance. It is already clear that the year 2012 was very successful for the company, the corporation’s press service reports. This is true of all the basic divisions: the carriage- and mechanical assembly ones as well as the metallurgical one. Uralvagonzavod actually managed to exceed the target figures set before the workers at the beginning of the year. For one, this year’s expected number of carriages was manufactured as early as late

December 6, 2012. Some rockslide occurred at Krasnaya Shapochka mine, killing one worker (according to preliminary data), the press officer of the Russian Emergencies Ministry’s Ural Regional Center reports. The rock fall occurred at 2:31 AM Moscow time; a rescue team is now working on the scene of the accident. Krasnaya Shapochka is a bauxite mine that belongs to United Company RUSAL’s SUBR.

December 6, 2012. A.I.Brizhan Youth Council at Sinara Pipe Plant (a member of Pipe Metallurgical Company (TMK)) won in the municipal youth organizations contest called The Leader of the Year 2012, TMK’s press service reports. The results of the contest were announced at a local youth seminar held in Kamensk-Uralsky’s Social/Cultural Center. Sinara Pipe Plant’s Council was declared the best in the city, while its head Denish Cheburin won in the Head of Youth Organization category for this year. ‘It’s nice to know that our activity, aimed at developing the youth movement at the plant, has been

December 5, 2012. Pipe Metallurgical Company (TMK), one of the world’s largest OCTG manufacturers, bought a 55% shareholding in Gulf International Pipe Industry L.L.C. (GIPI) in the Sultanate of Oman, TMK press service reports. The enterprise’s capacity makes it possible to produce over 200,000 tons of OCTG welded and line pipes for the oil and gas industry. The plant’s key customers are currently some major O&G enterprises operating in the Persian Gulf. GIPI’s other stockholders are Oman Investment Corporation (OIC), Gulf Investment Corporation (GIC), and Posco P&S. TMK agreed with

December 5, 2012. UBT-Uralvagonzavod (a member of Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation) is launching a subsidiary on the premises of Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant, Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s press service reports. The project was elaborated in order to sell Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant-Uraltrac’s produce. Using the subsidiary’s customer database will help the Chelyabinsk division of the corporation to sell its railway vehicles spare parts and components. The two parties will also cooperate in supplying Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant with goods and materials. UBT has already been

December 5, 2012. Yekaterinburg is now of the top 20 Russian cities with the greatest number of companies that accept credit and debit cards for payments. The rating is topped by Surgut, Izhevsk, and Nizhnevartovsk: these cities have the greatest share of companies whose goods and services can be paid for using a bank card. This information is available from the research carried out by 2GIS, who compared 180 Russian cities in terms of organizations that process cards issued by international payment systems. The research resulted in singling out the top 20 cities where cash is not quite so

December 5, 2012. An outlet in Yekaterinburg will enjoy great popularity, as this market niche is currently vacant; this will also attract more investments into the region, the plenipotentiary representative of the Trustees and Developers Guild for Yekaterinburg and Sverdlovsk Region Andrei Bril said at a press conference dedicated to the results of the Guild’s local division’s performance in 2012 today. ‘We need outlets to make sure people don’t have to go shopping to Milan and leave large sums of money there,’ Bril pointed out. Now there are currently no outlet centers in Russia. In 2012,

December 5, 2012. Yekaterinburg City Council is in no hurry to start working on the construction of the second line of the local underground network, as the officials fear the necessary funds (approximately 32bn RUR) will not be allocated from the federal budget, Deputy Mayor for Strategic Planning & Economic & Financial Issues Alexander Vysokinsky said at a meeting of the Economic Development, Investment, Industry, and Entrepreneurial Activity Committee and Urban Planning and Land Management Committee. To start constructing the underground, some time-consuming preliminary work has to

December 4, 2012. On the background of an active foreign investment attraction policy, one wonders what exact projects are of high priority and whether our vision of the investment attractiveness is the same to the approach of potential partners. The state encourages investment in the development of industrial parks, creating new high-tech jobs. Also those businessmen would receive substantial government support who wish to co-finance social infrastructure facilities like kindergartens and housing for public sector employees. This means that the projects offered for co-financing are either of

December 4, 2012. The representatives of Yekaterinburg Electrical Network Company took part in the All-Russian conference on the implementation prospects for the electric vehicles charging infrastructure in the Russian Federation that was coordinated at the initiative of Federal Grid Company (FSK UES). The conference participants talked about the electric vehicles market and charging infrastructure potential. This trend in the Russian energy and electricity sector is currently one of the most important ones; it is expected to promote the creation of Smart Grid intellectual networks and to

December 4, 2012. 1bn RUR was left in the accounts of Sverdlovsk Region Roads Fund by the end of 2012, Chairman of the Infrastructure and Housing Policies Committee and the Legislative Assembly Deputy Oleg Isakov said in the course of the committee meeting today. This money was not spent because of a savings policy. Isakov asked the committee members, who are, in fact, his fellow Legislative Assembly colleagues, to work out a procedure for integrating this money in the budget for the year 2013. Amendments to the budget to this extent have already been presented to officials for consideration.