The Russian legislature is lagging behind the innovations that could have been implemented and yielded profit a long time ago, Siemens Complex Transport Solutions Director Dr. Rolf Epstein said in the course of a discussion on Russia’s megaprojects as the essential drivers of demand for innovations at the exhibition INNOPROM 2011 in Yekaterinburg. ‘The existing technical regulations, standards and orders must be modified as soon as possible,’ he pointed out; otherwise, he said, the introduction of innovations would come to a halt. Plenipotentiary Representative of Russian Federation President

Sverdlovsk Region is going to get an additional 460m RUR from the federal budget within the framework of education system upgrades program. The agreement to this extent was signed by Russia’s Education Ministry and Sverdlovsk Region Government. The upgrades program also provides for a 30% increase in teachers’ salaries using the regional budgetary funds. The increase will affect those teaching at pre-schools, schools and extracurricular educational establishments. ‘After these obligations have already been met, the Russian Federation is giving Sverdlovsk Region 460m RUR to be invested in the

UrBC, Istanbul, Turkey, July 15, 2011. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) completed the construction of its metallurgical facility MMK-Atakas in Turkey. The project was finished off with the launch of a continuous hot-dip galvanizing unit on the production premises in Istanbul. MMK announced the launch of the continuous hot-dip galvanizing unit on the production premises in Istanbul, Turkey, quite recently. The launch of the unit signifies the completion of MMK-Atakas on two Turkish sites, in Iskenderun and in Istanbul. The production facility in Iskenderun was completed in the spring

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk Region, July 15, 2011. The first section of the cold-roll Mill 2000 was launched at Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) today. The launching ceremony was attended by the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, MMK PR Department reports. The facility, capable of manufacturing 2 million tons of goods a year, will mainly deal in the production of high quality cold-rolled and zinc-coated rolled products for external and internal car parts. This produce is also expected to be popular with the home appliances manufacturers as well as with the building industry.

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk Region, July 15, 2011. ‘The launch of the new Mill 2000 is a truly important event not only for Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works but for the entire country’s metallurgical industry as well. It is also a significant thing for the Russian automobile industry, because our localizing goal here could not possibly be achieved without the availability of the automobile body sheets you are starting to produce,’ Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) employees. Vladimir Putin actually attended the launching ceremony of

Sverdlovsk Region Government and the German company Siemens signed a strategic partnership agreement on the first day of INNOPROM 2011, the international exhibition and forum. The paper was signed by the region’s Governor Alexander Misharin and President Siemens AG in Russia & Central Asia Dietrich Meller, the Governor’s press officer reports. The agreement defines the main fields where Siemens will cooperate with the region’s enterprises and organizations. For one, this includes transportation, energy-saving, the energy sector, IT, and medical technologies. Besides, the parties will

On June 1, 2011, Russia’s Central Customs considerably raised the minimum cost of table wine imported to Russia from a number of European countries, which naturally meant the suppliers now have to spend more on the customs duty payments, RBC daily reports. The customs duty comes to 20% of the purchase price, and there exists the so-called control level of the customs price: this is the lowest price at which, in the customs officials’ opinion, wine is available abroad. The new rules imposed by the Central Excise Customs might result in inexpensive imported wines growing costlier. Suppliers

The Ural International Exhibition & Forum INNOPROM 2011 opened in Yekaterinburg yesterday. The agenda of the first day of the exhibition covered the official opening ceremony in the course of a plenary session, entitled ‘Supply and Demand on the Russian Innovations Market: A Roadmap’. The session was followed by a press conference of the Strategic Initiatives Agency and the signing of an agreement between Sverdlovsk Region Government and Siemens AG. Then, a round table discussion on the Agency’s projects and their selection and promotion was organized at the forum. There are about one

The Chinese truck manufacturer FAW is planning to have its one- to five-ton trucks produced in Russia, RBC daily reports. We are now looking for a partner to set up the manufacture,’ FAW representative said, although the names of the parties the company is negotiating with were not disclosed. RBC daily’s sources says FAW has been holding talks with the Urals-based factory AMUR, among other companies. A source close to AMUR confirmed that the negotiations indeed were in progress. If the two parties come to an agreement, the Ural plant will be making up to 20,000 trucks a year. The Chinese

The Ural branch of Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange (MICEX) that currently deals in all the trading transactions started operating in Yekaterinburg recently. The subsidiary opened because two Russian bourses, MICEX and RTS, are merging. Prior to this, Ural Federal District’s division of the Federal Financial Markets Service annulled the stock trading license of MICEX-Ural Regional Stock Center.

A married couple from Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk Region, was accused of fraud recently. The couple, who were the official Ford dealers in Russia, received about 40m RUR from sixty-five customers so that they could buy the automobiles, but the money was spent ad libitum, the press officer of Ural Federal District division of the General Prosecutor’s Office reports. In 2008 and 2009, one of the suspects was a Director of Magtechnocenter, Ford’s official representative in Russia, while his spouse was the company’s CFO. A portion of the money was invested in putting up a building for a joint stock

Ural Airlines flew 996,112 passengers in the first half of 2011, which was 32% more than in the first half of 2010. 361,422 people flew internationally, which was 33.5% better than in January-June 2010, 180,615 people used the company’s flights destined for places around the CIS (this was 33.5% more than in the first half of 2010), and 454,075 passengers used domestic flights (this was 24% more than in January-June 2010), the company’s press service reports. In June 2011, Ural Airlines’ passenger traffic reached 279,211 people, which was 43% more than in June 2010. This figure included

Bank Koltso Urala keeps improving its business customer services in the field of foreign trade. The bank’s subsidiaries in Kemerovo, Orenburg, Shadrinsk, and Uchaly now provide their customers with a bank guarantee to ensure the payment of customs duties and taxes. The bank’s business customers department’s employees report bank guarantees became possible due to the fact that the bank is now in the Register of organizations that are allowed to act as guarantors to the customs authorities. This service only used to be available at the bank’s head office; now that the subsidiaries can offer

Sverdlovsk Region’s fire stations now have 163 units of special forest fire fighting vehicles, most of which are in unsatisfactory condition. About a half of all the vehicles are one hundred percent worn out, about a third are 80% to 100% worn out, and only twelve vehicles are under 80% worn out, Ural Federal District Forestry Department reports. At the same time, Sverdlovsk Region does not have enough machinery for fighting forest fires. For one, the five Type 3 fire stations that will be set up in the region in 2011 need twenty fire fighting tank cars, ten off-road bulldozers, and fifteen

Sverdlovsk Region might become a member of Russia’s Innovational Regions Association this fall, Ural Federal University Provost for Innovations Sergey Kortov announced at a press conference today. We couldn’t join the association last year due to the lack of legislative grounds. For example, Tomsk, which is currently the country’s leader in the field of innovations, has ten necessary laws, but we only had one piece of legislation back then; as a result, the Mid-Urals’ legislative base was insufficient,’ Kortov explained. The official believes that now, however, Sverdlovsk Region meets all the

UrBC, Moscow, July 13, 2011. The Metallosnabzheniye I Sbyt magazine July-August 2011 issue carried a rating of the leading ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgical enterprises and metal-trading companies in the first half of 2011. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) was declared the best rolled sheets manufacturer on the list. The rating is based on the questionnaires filled in by metal goods consumers, surveys where metal market experts acted as respondents, and multi-faceted analysis of the metallurgical enterprises’ activity. The best companies were selected on the basis of the

RIA-Analitika’s Center for Economic Analysis experts did a research on the banking systems of the countries of the CIS on the basis of the official banking statistics data and the bank’s reports available from the public sources. In the end, the experts produced a rating of the Commonwealth’s top hundred largest banks (in terms of asset volume as of January 1, 2011). As a matter of fact, Georgia’s banks are featured in the rating, even though this country left the Commonwealth of Independent States two years ago. Five member states turned out not to have banks whose asset volume would be

Turkey is still the most popular country with Russian tourists in terms of bookings in July 2011: 34.7% of all the inquiries made through Tourindex are related to this country. However, this figure is nearly 4.3% smaller than in June 2010, the Association of Russian Tour Operators’ Analytic Service reports. In comparison with June 2010, the total number of Turkey-related inquiries dropped by almost 60% in June 2011. Still, Turkey remained three times more popular than Greece, whose share in the total number of tourist inquiries came to 12% in June. As for Egypt, the number of inquiries

Sverdlovsk Region-based borrowers are getting less active in the summer of 2011, which the lending market players say has to do with the seasonal variations. According to the mortgage advisor Optima Credit, the demand for loans slumped by 17% in the beginning of summer compared with May 2011, with greatest downfalls observed in the business loans sector (47%) and mortgages (46%). The demand for consumer loans declined by 9%, whereas that for automobile loans has remained the same. The business loans are really not so popular with the borrowers just now. However, some businesspeople keep

It might become illegal to sell right hand drive cars imported to Russia recently. Such was the proposal contained in the project on the new technical regulations for vehicles within the single Customs Union which comprises Russia, Kazakhstan, and Byelorussia, Vedomosti reports. Right hand drive cars are already banned in Kazakhstan and Byelorussia. When the proposal was first voiced in preparation for the Russian technical requirements for vehicles in 2009, drivers protested en masse, especially in the Far East. According to head of the Ministry for Industry and Trade Alexei Rakhmanov, the