UrBC, Moscow, April 1, 2019. Russians’ debt ratio reached 9.9% last month; this is the nearest the figure has ever got to the all-time high registered in 2014 (10.4%), TASS refers to the Central Bank of Russia’s Financial Stability Director Elizaveta Danilova as stating. According to Danilova, the primary factor affecting the people’s debt burden is the growing amount of unsecured consumer loans. At the same time, the mortgage-related debts have been quite low in the last few years and are only growing gradually. This has to do with the fact that mortgages are long-term loans with (typically)

UrBC, Chelyabinsk, April 1, 2019. Chelyabinsk Region’s banks issued 3,664 automobile loans in January-February 2019, which exceeded the figures for one year earlier by 10.3%, the National Credit History Bureau’s press service says. In Russia on the whole, the number of newly issued car loans came to 108,100 (up 8.2% on January-February 2018). ‘Even though the state-run subsidy programs are no longer in place, more cars were bought on credit in early 2019 than in early 2018. Additionally, the increase in sales got boosted by improved lending terms (thanks to the car makers’ support, among

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 29, 2019. ChelPipe Group and B.N. Yeltsin Ural Federal University signed a roadmap agreement on cooperation in 2019, the company’s press service reports. The paper was signed by ChelPipe Group’s HR Director Alexander Luzhbin, UFU Vice Rector for Information Policy Alexei Fayustov, UFU Vice Rector for Studies Sergey Knyazev, Director of UFU Institute for New Materials & Technologies Oleg Sheshukov, and Deputy Director of UFU Higher School of Economics & Management Flyur Urmanov. The two parties will work together on the following: ChelPipe Group’s Intern

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 29, 2019. Yekaterinburg Council’s Transport Committee approved of GorTrans’s proposal to extend bus line 18 to Akademik Sakharov Ave, in District Akademicheskiy and then to Akademgorodok (end stop), the town council’s website states. Now automobiles were allowed in Akademik Sakharov Ave. as early as the beginning of March; Yekaterinburg Council’s Transport Committee also decided to send large buses (Line 18) there as well. The buses only used to go as far as the end stop at the intersection of Wilhelm de Gennin St. and Pavel Shamanov St. in Akademicheskiy. According

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 29, 2019. EVRAZ Holding’s Raspadskaya Coal Company’s Raspadskaya Mine has produced 2,000,000,000 kg of coal since the start of the year, the company’s press service reports. ‘Our miners are raising their output by the year: in 2018, they only got to the 2,000,000,000-kg threshold in April,’ the press service says. Three mining and six developing sections were behind this year’s production figures. Alexei Ivanov’s team (Section 17) produced the most: 718,000,000 kg of coal. Rustam Muminov’s team (Section 1) produced 656,000,000 kg; and Stanislav Kovtunets’s team

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 29, 2019. ChelPipe Group’s shareholder and President of Uralsky Trubnik Hockey Club Alexander Fedorov congratulated the team on their victory in the Russian Hockey Championship. The players came back from Irkutsk today, having beaten Baikal-Energiya 7:2 and winning bronze (the club’s best result so far), the Group’s press service reports. ‘ChelPipe Group has been supporting Russian hockey in Pervouralsk for over a decade now. Our programs involved around 6,000 young hockey players, and we take pride in the fact that more than a half of Uralsky Trubnik’s players come

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 29, 2019. 79% of people living in Ural Federal District say they have been hit by Russia’s ongoing economic downfall; this is 11% more than the country’s average (68%), Public Opinion Foundation’s research findings indicate. According to the research, only 14% of Ural Federal District-based Russians feel there’s no crisis in Russia whatsoever. In the country on the whole, the figure is 20%. As for the country’s future prospects, 24% of locals believe the downfall trend will keep gaining momentum; 8% hope for improvements; 4% believe in complete recovery; 20% feel

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 28, 2019. Mayor of Yekaterinburg Alexander Vysokinsky supported the idea of a work team to make the city’s District Akademicheskiy yet another administrative district in Yekaterinburg; the proposal was talked over during Vysokinsky’s and Sverdlovsk Region Duma deputies’ meeting with Governor of Sverdlovsk Region. The procedure to make Akademicheskiy Yekaterinburg’s eighth administrative district is a part of a larger program to celebrate the city’s 300th anniversary in 2023. It has been announced that the new district is expected to boost the development of the

UrBC, Chelyabinsk, March 28, 2019. A World Theatre Day concert hosted by ChelPipe Group will take place in M.I. Glinka Chelyabinsk State Academy Opera & Ballet Theater on March 27, 2019. The event gets coordinated and financed by members of the theater’s Board of Trustees and ChelPipe Group’s shareholders Alexander Fedorov and Andrei Komarov, the company’s press service reports. The concert program includes Konstantin Raikin’s one-man show Heaven Above the Chaos and a performance of the French composer Louis-Hector Berlioz’s works by Tatarstan’s State Symphony Orchestra (Art

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, March 28, 2019. A workshop for managers and mechanics from mining and metallurgical enterprises’ repair depots will be held on the premises of Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) on March 27, 2019, the company’s press service reports. The two-day seminar on the companies’ experience with launching operation efficiency-enhancing programs at metallurgical enterprises’ repair depots gets coordinated by OOO CherMet Corporation and MMK. The workshop program covers the main mechanisms of making repair depots more productive; the use of modern digital technologies for MRO;

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 28, 2019. Sverdlovsk Region Government and SKB-Bank signed a socioeconomic cooperation agreement; the paper was signed by Governor Evgeny Kuivashev and Chair of SKB-Bank’s Supervisory Board Denis Repnikov, Sverdlovsk Region’s Information Policy Department reports. The agreement dwells on the way the two parties will interact in dealing with Sverdlovsk Region’s vital socioeconomic issues. The key partnership areas are: loans and funding for projects and programs that Sverdlovsk Region runs to support production industries and quality banking services to local

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 28, 2019. Eighteen Sverdlovsk Region’s residents submitted tax forms this year that indicate their income amounted to more than RUB 1 billion in 2018; this is 2.5 times more than during the last tax deadline, when the number of local billionaires was only eight, Deputy Head of Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Russia’s Federal Tax Service Lidia Isayeva announced at a press conference this week. According to Isayeva, fourteen people on the list live in Yekaterinburg, while four of them live in Sverdlovsk Region. The highest annual income figure declared was RUB 70

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 27, 2019. Sverdlovsk Region Government coordinated a meeting chaired by First Vice Governor Alexei Orlov and contributed to by President of KORTROS Group Veniamin Golubitsky, the Group’s Director-General Stanislav Kisselev, and the Group’s RSG-Akademicheskoye’s Director-General Viktor Krivosheyin. One of the meeting’s primary agenda points was Yekaterinburg’s District Akademicheskiy getting the status of Smart City Program’s testing ground. The idea was supported by Alexei Orlov, who believes the area has everything necessary for the success of the digital

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, March 27, 2019. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) is going to present its innovative developments at the 22nd Moscow International Salon of Inventions & Innovative Technologies/Archimedes 2019, the company’s press service reports. Archimedes opened on March 26. This year, MMK is featuring four patented solutions for making cold-resistant rolled metal goods suitable for icebreaking vessels, engineering vehicles, and maritime assets operated in the Arctic. ‘This is a cold-resistant metal product variety that offers a unique combination of resource-saving alloying

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 27, 2019. The all-Russian BreakPoint Forum for young IT leaders took place in Yekaterinburg this week; MegaFon acted as the nationwide digital partner of the event. More than two hundred Yekaterinburg students attended the forum, the company’s press service reports. The event’s agenda covered 18.5 hours full of communication and experience-sharing, talks by dozens of experts, and a series of workshops. The experts, for one, talked about the current market trends, IT career prospects, and the reality of working with Big Data, 5G, and the Internet of Things.

UrBC, Moscow, March 27, 2019. Renault is calling 19,218 Dokker and Duster makes off due to possible brake issues, Rosstandart reports. The automobiles in question were all sold between November 2017 and March 2019. ‘The product is being recalled because it is possible the brake booster membrane has not been fitted properly at the manufacturing plant,’ the company says. Renault Russia’s authorized representatives are going to inform the car owners they need to take their vehicle to their nearest dealer to get it repaired. The cars will get checked for the brake booster manufacturing date, and

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 27, 2019. Sverdlovsk Region’s Legislative Assembly adopted the new regulation on tax property in the first reading, agreeing on the date the new rules should come into effect; the new policy means that Sverdlovsk Region’s home owners will have to pay a property tax that will be determined based on their assets’ cadastral value. Starting January 1, 2020, the Federal Tax Service will be assigning a property tax based on the particular asset’s cadastral value. The value in question will get determined by the State Cadastral Valuation Center. All the information

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 26, 2019. EVRAZ Holding’s member enterprise Raspadsky Quarry keeps replacing its special vehicles with newer versions. Seven new vehicles got launched lately: an excavator, an oil rig, and five open-pit dump trucks. Also, a bulldozer arrived in December, Raspadskaya Coal Company’s PR Department reports. The special-purpose vehicles cost around $9.3m to buy. All of these came to replace their obsolete, worn-out predecessors. All the new units meet the current international industrial safety requirements. ‘Five Caterpillar 777E dump trucks that were made by the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 26, 2019. ChelPipe Group presented its Future of White-Coated Metallurgy Blue-Collar Training Program to schoolchildren and their parents at the International SMART EXPO URAL Exhibition in Yekaterinburg on March 22-24, the Group’s press service reports. The Group operated a stand where the program trainers and experts told their visitors about the job qualifications the pipe manufacturers are looking for, and about carrier opportunities at pipe-making plants. Visitors to the stand could also take a look at the Group’s production facilities in the course of a 3D

UrBC, Moscow, March 26, 2019. Sverdlovsk Region’s waste recycling operators were given the 12th position in the rating of companies operating in Russia’s eighty-one constituencies in terms of how much they charge for household waste treatment and recycling. Sverdlovsk Region’s companies charge RUB 771.8 per m3 on average. The research on the operators’ pricing policies got carried out by FinEkstpertisa; it is reported the prices are at their highest in Krasnoyarsk Territory (RUB 1,696.7 per m3) and at their lowest in Primorye Territory (RUB 181.6 per m3). Chelyabinsk Region came 71st in the