UrBC, Moscow, July 2, 2019. The Russian Government issued a provision that makes it obligatory for grocery stores to display regular dairy foods and surrogate ones containing dairy fat substitutes on separate shelves; the document is now available on the Cabinet’s website. Dairy products and foods containing milk or milk-based ingredients must be placed on supermarket/store shelves in a way that makes it visually possible to tell them from other food types; besides, a statement should be given that these are foods without any dairy fat substitutes,’ the provision indicates. The paper came

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 2, 2019. 8.5m credit/debit cards got issued in Sverdlovsk Region in the first quarter of the year, which exceeded the figures for one year earlier by 3%. This included 1.6m MIR cards within the national payment system (up 70% on a year earlier), the Bank of Russia’s Ural branch reports. Sverdlovsk Region-based cardholders performed RUB 553.5bn worth of transactions in the first three months of the year (15% more than in the first three months of 2018). The number of transactions rose by 25% and reached 311.4m. The share of card transactions involving paying for goods

UrBC, Moscow, July 2, 2019. The price of communal housing services rose by 2.4% in Russia on July 1, 2019. This is the second time the increase has been introduced this year so far. On January 1, prices rose by 1.7% throughout the country on average, after the VAT got raised from 18% to 20%. Now Sverdlovsk Region’s Regional Energy Commission also confirmed an increase in the price of natural gas supply service earlier; Yekaterinburg’s water and sewer company announced its prices were going up as well.

UrBC, Chelyabinsk, July 1, 2019. ChelPipe Group presented its program for cooperating with the military at Army 2019 Forum in Moscow’s Patriot Park Exhibition Center, the Group’s press service reports. The representatives of the industrial sector and members of the Russian Armed Forces spoke about the new ways business and the military could work together, about the legal issues relating to continuous education programs, and the ideal draftees of the future at a round table discussion on the army draft and job training. ChelPipe Group’s Deputy Director-General Mikhail Ivanov gave a talk on

UrBC, Chelyabinsk, July 1, 2019. First Freight Company’s Chelyabinsk branch shipped 195,000,000 kg of export/import items under its trans-border freight forwarding contracts via Yuzhno–Uralskaya (South Ural) Railway in January-May 2019; this was 15% more than one year earlier. The company’s international freight turnover came to 390,000,000 ton-kilometers, the company’s press service reports. ‘We do more than handle shipments, we actually work out the best route for our customers’ consignments, track the intermediary stages of the shipments, and cover all of the paperwork. Our key customer is

UrBC, Pervouralsk, July 1, 2019. ChelPipe Group, Sverdlovsk Region Government, and Pervouralsk Council signed a cooperation agreement to design and implement a master plan for a series of urban improvements in Pervouralsk, the company’s press service reports. The agreement was signed by ChelPipe Group’s shareholder Andrei Komarov, Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Evgeny Kuivashev, Mayor of Pervouralsk Igor Kabets, and Sergey Kapkov, head of Moscow State University School of Economics’ Culture and Urban Development Center. The public-private partnership program will cover ChelPipe Group, which

UrBC, Chelyabinsk, July 1, 2019. 19,000 kg of fake designer clothing (the imitations of Gucci, Calvin Klein, Adidas, Reebok, Nike, and Puma) got detained at Chelyabinsk Region Customs. The clothes were meant to have been sold in Perm, Ural Customs Administration reports. ‘A car loaded with goods was traveling from Leninskoye, Chuysk Region, Kyrgyzstan, and got halted at A 310 near Troitsk Customs Point. More than 8,000 fake designer items were found inside, including sportswear, footwear, socks, and T-shirts bearing famous logos. The damage done to the trademark owners has been preliminarily

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 1, 2019. Starting July 1, a new universal upper limit on the amount of debt one can have on loans with the repayment period of under 1 year comes into effect in Russia. Fines, loan interest, and other payments relating to this loan type must not exceed the principal debt amount itself by more than two times, the Bank of Russia’s Ural division’s PR Department reports. If someone takes out a loan for RUB 15,000, for example, they will have to pay back no more than RUB 45,000 (RUB 15,000 would be the principal debt amount and RUB 30,000 would come from fines and

UrBC, Chelyabinsk, June 28, 2019. ChelPipe Group started a transformation program for META Group, its scrap metal division. Switching to a customer-oriented, digital technology-based business model will enhance the company’s business efficiency and make it one of Russia’s top three scrap metal enterprises. According to the Group’s press service, the program will get fully implemented by 2023 and will consist of two different stages. In 2019-2021, an objective-based business process structure will get developed, and IT solutions will get introduced to control and manage the scrap metal

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, June 28, 2019. MMK Group’s partner Metallurg Charity Foundation took part in the 3d Regions’ Social Innovations Forum in Moscow; the event got coordinated by Russia’s Federation Council’s Federal Assembly and Moscow Government. The role national projects play in the social sector’s innovative development was the key topic on the event’s agenda. The forum gathered together three hundred delegates from eighty-five Russian federal constituencies: government officials, members of socially oriented non-profit organizations, business community representatives, researchers,

UrBC, Moscow, June 28, 2019. MegaFon and BCS Broker recently launched a mobile investment app called MegaFon Investment. Thanks to the new tech solutions and the telecom company’s resources, customers can now invest from anywhere in the world, MegaFon’s press service reports. ‘The new app will appeal to both experienced traders and beginner investors. Thanks to MegaFon Investment, the mobile app users can now deal in securities or foreign currency trading at Moscow’s and Saint Petersburg’s stock exchanges: you need to sign into the app and open a brokerage account online, which will only take

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 28, 2019. Yekaterinburg came third in the rating of Russian cities with the greatest number of cars: as of January 1, 2019, there were 462,000 passenger vehicles registered in Yekaterinburg, Autostat reports. Moscow is No.1 in the rating of the country’s top 25 automobile cities with its 3.7 million automobiles. Saint Petersburg, with its 1.75 million units, comes second. Novosibirsk (445,000 units), Samara (394,000), Kazan (374,000), Nizhniy Novgorod (361,000), Krasnodar (341,000), Chelyabinsk (331,000), and Voronezh (330,000) follow Yekaterinburg in the rating.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 28, 2019. The number of consumer loans issued to Sverdlovsk Region-based applicants in May 2019 dropped by 12.5% against May 2018, that is, from 50,900 down to 44,500, the National Credit History Bureau reports. This was the most noticeable drop among the country’s top thirty consumer lending markets (broken down by federal constituencies). Khabarovsk Territory (a decrease of 10.8%), Udmurtia (a 10.7% drop), Altay Territory (-7.6%), and Krasnodar Territory (-6.3%) come next. In Russia on the whole, the number of newly issued consumer loans declined by 3.3% in May

UrBC, Moscow, June 27, 2019. MegaFon is now getting postal terminals and online store pick-up points installed at its retail outlets. Customers based in Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk will be the first to have the opportunity of picking up their parcels at MegaFon stores, the telecom company’s press service reports. PickPoint terminal chain will act as one of MegaFon’s partners in the project, providing up to 7,500 retail stores and market places (including AliExpress) with access to pick-up points at MegaFon’s stores. MegaFon intends to launch the terminals at all of its flagship stores

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 27, 2019. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development (UBRD) decided on Mikhail Prilepov as the new head of the Mid-Urals division. According to the bank’s press service, the newly appointed executive will primarily be in charge of actualizing the division’s business potential and raising profits through retail and business customer retention. ‘The key objective of our Happy Customer strategy is to improve customer service. This is why, in my work, I intend to focus on making sure everyone who comes to the bank gets custom-made treatment,’ Prilepov says. The

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, June 27, 2019. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) managers completed a six-month special course on talent development offered by the Stockholm School of Economics through Personal In-Company Cadre Training Center. The training program was a bespoke course designed specially for the MMK management. According to MMK’s Information, PR & Advertising Department, the Stockholm School of Economics is one of the world’s best-reputed learning venues and a business school leader on the global market. MMK has been collaborating with the school for some years now, even

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 27, 2019. You can now apply for SKB-Bank’s credit card and place an order for the card delivery online, the bank’s press service reports. ‘Applying for a credit card is very easy: you submit your application on the bank’s website and select ‘Courier delivery service’. Once your application has been processed and approved, you only need to coordinate the time and place with the courier delivery operator. The card and the papers will get delivered to you then,’ the press service says. The courier delivery service is available in Yekaterinburg and within 90 km of the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 27, 2019. Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev extended the food embargo involving imports from a number of countries through December 31, 2020. The announcement can now be seen at Russia’s official legal information portal. According to the latest version of the paper, the words ‘through December 31, 2019’ have been replaced with ‘through December 31, 2020’. Now the EU, United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, Switzerland, and a number of other countries imposed a series of sanctions on Russia in March 2014, following the Ukrainian developments. Then, on August 6,

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, June 26, 2019. METEC International Metallurgical Trade Fair opens in Düsseldorf today. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) is taking part in the event, the company’s Information & PR Department reports. Visitors coming to MMK’s stand will be able to see a wide range of produce and tech solutions offered by one of Russia’s largest metallurgical companies. Following a large-scale renovation and upgrades project implemented in the last few years, MMK now makes up-to-date, competitive, innovative produce: high-margin heavy plates for the oil and gas sector and the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, June 26, 2019. Following a temporary ban on any flights from Russia to Georgia, Ural Airlines suggest that customers with plane tickets to Georgian locations that were to have been operated on July 8 and later exchange them for a ticket for any other scheduled flight Ural Airlines operate within Russia and the CIS member states — at no extra cost, the air carrier’s press service says. ‘Just because flights to Georgia have been cancelled doesn’t mean you have to give up on a vacation. Ural Airlines suggest you consider some other destinations to fly to for your