UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 23, 2019. Russia’s Finance Ministry suggested this week that all precious metals, precious stones, and jewelry pieces made from them should get stamped starting from 2020; the draft bill to this effect is now available online at regulation.gov.ru. Prime reports. Under the terms of the proposal, the State Integrated Information System for Precious Metals/Precious Stones Surveillance will have to get introduced as well. A number of executive bodies apportioned by the Russian Government, Russia’s Central Bank, certain other banks, businesses, and sole traders dealing

UrBC, Chelyabinsk, April 23, 2019. ChelPipe Group’s member enterprise Chelyabinsk Pipe Rolling Plant (ChelPipe) hosted United Russia’s 1st Environmental Forum this week. The plant’s Vysota 239 Department served as a venue for the session on air emissions in industrial locations as the core of the environment vs. the economy conflicts. The talks given dwelled on air quality and on the Russian President’s Executive Order On National Goals and Strategic Objectives of the Russian Federation through to 2024, the company’s press service reports. ChelPipe’s Managing Director Evgeny Gubanov talked

UrBC, Moscow, April 22, 2019. Russians’ factual incomes dropped by 2% in the first quarter of 2019 compared with the first quarter of 2018, Rosstat’s recent data indicate. The people’s factual take-home pay (with all the inflation adjustments in place) dropped by 2.3% in the first quarter of 2019 compared with one year previously, Rosstat states. A Russian’s monthly salary comes to RUB 45,000 on average (up 5.2% on March 2018). Since the consumer price index fluctuated by exactly the same percentage, the factual take-home pay thus remained at the same level as last March. According to the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 22, 2019. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development (UBRD) and SETTERS developed and launched a special advertising campaign. The campaign, dedicated to promoting the bank’s new 120-day-grace-period credit card offer, got launched on the URBD’s Instagram account on April 15. the bank’s press service reports. The creative concept for the campaign steps away from advertising the benefits of the credit card directly and focuses on Instagram communication that relies on the values the bank’s target audience supports. The resulting product is the space that

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 22, 2019. The housing developer RSG-Akademicheskoye is going to support Sverdlovsk Region’s private investors whose housing cooperatives failed to put up their homes for them. There are more than three hundred people on their list at the moment, Sverdlovsk Region’s Information Policy Department reports. RSG-Akademicheskoye will be supplied with a land allotment for a major construction project in exchange for providing housing or other kind of support for the local victims of unscrupulous housing developers. ‘RSG-Akademicheskoye now has 24,000 m2 worth of ready

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 22, 2019. Officers from Yekaterinburg Customs and Yekaterinburg division of Russia’s Internal Affairs Ministry detected a set of supposedly undeclared electronic appliances in a large international online shop for the second time in a fortnight, Ural Customs’ press service reports. 763 phones and vacuum cleaners of dubious origin already got confiscated as recently April 4. The shop kept on with the business as usual. This time, 239 photography appliances got confiscated. It has been determined preliminarily that the camera flashes and lens-cleaning robots had

UrBC, Moscow, April 22, 2019. Russian car drivers might soon be required by law to register as ‘amateurs’ (i.e. those who only have their vehicles for personal use) and ‘professionals’ (i.e. those who make a living out of it). The amendments to the Road Safety Act have recently been developed by the Transport Ministry and are now available online at regulation.gov.ru. The ministry’s legislative proposal has to do with the fact that ‘amateurs’ have to process a lot of irrelevant information at their driving schools that does not actually address road safety issues. The current Education Act,

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 19, 2019. EVRAZ Holding’s Raspadskaya Coal Company’s sanitary/environmental lab now uses the atomic absorption spectrometer KVANT.Z to test water samples. According to the company’s press service, the new appliance makes it possible to determine the amount of unwanted particles in natural, shaft, and waste water with high precision; KVANT.Z also controls the maximum permissible discharge. The unit cost RUB 3.5 million to buy. The lab got audited successfully by RusAccreditation and proved its expertise and quality management system’s validity in February. Now the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 19, 2019. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development (UBRD) recently complemented its HR Consulting package with a new service: testing a company’s job candidates and existing employees online. According to the bank’s press service, the UBRD’s business customers looking to hire new people may now have their job candidates tested online in order to avoid subjectivity in the process and get a comprehensive evaluation of the candidates’ potential and personality traits. The tests can also get used to assess the employees already on the team. The online test

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 19, 2019. Yekaterinburg Duma deputies went to an off-site meeting at District Akademicheskiy’s children’s clinic this week. The goal of the meeting was to decide on the strategy of the social infrastructure development in Yekaterinburg’s eight administrative district, Yekaterinburg Council’s website states. Vice Mayor of Yekaterinburg for Social Policy Dmitri Baranov went over the social infrastructure facilities already operating in Akademicheskiy: kindergartens, schools, and clinics. He pointed out that additional facilities in the education, culture, and sports

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 19, 2019. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development (UBRD) won three international СХ World Awards; the awarding ceremony took place in Moscow on April 17, the bank’s press service reports. For one, the bank’s Quality Management System Project won as Best Customer Experience in B2C Sector/Finance: the UBRD managed to develop and introduce unified customer service standards across all of its communication channels, optimize its internal processes, and enforce a customer-oriented approach at every stage of product development — and all of this on quite a

UrBC, Moscow, April 19, 2019. The Russian State Duma adopted the so-called ‘mortgage break’ bill in the third and final reading this week, the Duma’s press service reports. ‘An amendment has been made to the legislation that allows to skip the notary authorization on mortgage contracts involving housing registered in the name of multiple owners. The amendment was necessary since, before it got adopted, the mortgage payers had to pay for the notary services both when a mortgage contract got signed and every single time their mortgage loan got restructured (the ‘mortgage break’ restructuring

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 18, 2019. Ural Airlines are launching a sale on their flights from Moscow Region’s Zhukovsky Airport to Tel Aviv and back on April 17-May 31, 2019. If you book your flight in the given period, the price of the ticket starts from as little as RUB 6,633 (Zhukovsky-Tel Aviv). The flights themselves will get operated on April 17-25, 2019 and May 7-June 30, 2019. Tickets for Tel Aviv-Zhukovsky flights start from RUB 8,913; these flights will get operated on April 22-May 8 and May 14-June 30, 2019. Reduced-price tickets are only available on the company website

UrBC, Chelyabinsk, April 18, 2019. ChelPipe Group’s Warehouse sent 300,000 kg of large-diameter pipes (LDPs) to EVRAZ Nizhny Tagil Metallurgical Plant (EVRAZ NTMK), the Group’s press service reports. The LDPs got made at the Group’s member enterprise Chelyabinsk Pipe Rolling Plant (ChelPipe) and will be used for EVRAZ NTMK’s production upgrades and retooling program. The entire batch is meant for NTMK’s cast iron-making Blast Furnace 6. ‘The fact that Russia’s largest metallurgical enterprise purchases pipes for its key facility from us is an acknowledgement of the great trust NTMK has in

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 18, 2019. The number of forged ruble bills found in Russia in the first quarter of the year rose by 5.85% against one year previously, the Bank of Russia’s press service reports. 8,911 forged banknotes got identified within the country’s banking sector in January-March 2019 (493 more than one year earlier). The bank’s press service reports most of the forged banknotes are 5,000-ruble ones (6,220), 1,000-ruble ones (1,835), and 2,000-ruble ones (680). The 2,000-ruble banknotes tend, as it happens, to get faked very poorly. The number of forged foreign currency bills

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 18, 2019. EVRAZ Nizhny Tagil Metallurgical Plant (EVRAZ NTMK) now uses a 3D printer to make a range of spare parts at its Band Wheel Department, EVRAZ Holding Ural’s Corporate Relations Center reports. The parts in question are radial blocks for ultrasound testing of the bands; phase units for swing cantilever cranes; brush rig components; and protection covers for lathing units. ‘Thanks to this modern technology, our idle time reduced greatly since we always have all the necessary parts in stock. The prime cost of these parts is many times lower than that of their

UrBC, Moscow, April 18, 2019. Mercedes-Benz is calling 762 Mercedes-Benz X-CLASS (470) and Mercedes-Benz Sprinter V-Class (447) units off the Russian market due to possible airbag and automatic emergency call issues, Rosstandart reports. The product recall involves Mercedes-Benz X-CLASS (470) makes that got manufactured in January-December 2018. ‘The automobiles are being called off due to the automatic emergency call system possibly not functioning properly. This means the system might not actually make an emergency call if an accident occurs, and rescue teams/ambulance will receive no call,

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 17, 2019. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development (UBRD) can now have its customers’ cards insured against fraud. The service is part of the multi-aspect payment safety program that is meant to protect customers against theft, the bank’s press service reports. Both debit and credit cards can get insured. Once you sign your insurance contract, you can feel safe knowing that in case your card gets stolen and money taken out of it, the entire amount will get compensated by the bank. If there's a skimming or a phishing issue, you are insured as well. One

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 17, 2019. ChelPipe Group’s Deputy Marketing & Communications Director Narine Fatykhova is going to give a talk at the B2B eCommerce Conference in Moscow, the Group’s press service reports. Fatykhova’s talk will be part of the case session on B2B Customer Experience Management; she will speak about the customer service development and online sales in Russia’s largest pipe manufacturing company. ‘The idea that customer experience needs to get managed in every instance of customer interaction is new to the B2B market; this is especially true of large production

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 17, 2019. Nikita Goryunov’s mining team (Head of Section 5: Yaroslav Yerchenko) were the first to produce 1,000,000,000 kg of coal at Uskovskaya Mine in the year 2019. This is the first time in EVRAZ Raspadskaya Coal Company’s history when the 1,000,000,000-kg benchmark gets hit in just 3.5 months, the company’s press service reports. Raspadskaya Coal Company’s Director-General and EVRAZ Holding’s Vice President Sergey Stepanov thanked the miners for their efforts and wished them every success at work. ‘Uskovskaya Mine has a great team. Next year, the miners will