UrBC, Moscow, March 26, 2019. Russian banks issued 2.76 million new loans in February 2019 (total amount: RUB 644.45 billion). This was, respectively, 7% and 16% more than in February 2017 (2.59 million new loans totaling to RUB 553.7 billion), United Credit History Bureau refers to data from 600 creditors as indicating. Cash loans remained the lending market’s fastest-growing segment last month: their number rose by 12% and their total amount increased by 30%. 1.17 million cash loans (total amount: RUB 319.4 billion) got issued in February 2019, compared with 1.04 million loans (total

UrBC, Moscow, March 26, 2019. Sverdlovsk Region came 46th in the recent rating of affordable mortgage markets: as many as 27.8% of people living in the constituency could actually afford a mortgage in 2018, RIA Novosti’s research findings indicate. It is reported the figure is up by 5.5% against 22.3% in the year 2017. In Russia on the whole, the share of families who could afford a mortgage rose to 30% last year, which was more than twice the percentage from three years earlier. The country’s top five mortgage markets are currently Yamalo-Nenetsky Autonomous District, Magadan Region,

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 25, 2019. EVRAZ Holding supplied over 1,300,000 kg of A500C fittings onto the construction site for Smart School Education Center in Irkutsk. The metal units were used to make the foundation and walls of the innovative cluster, EVRAZ Holding Siberia’s Corporate Relations Center reports. ‘Our A500C fittings fully comply with all the international standards. This is the most popular fitting variety that has a longer lifespan due to thermal reinforcement. Our customers are quite happy with these two parameters,’ says EVRAZ EVRAZ Consolidated West-Siberian Metallurgical

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 25, 2019. Ural Customs handed 1,500 kg of cigarettes over to Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Rospotrebnadzor (the state-run consumer rights watchdog) so that these could be destroyed. The cigarettes in question had been smuggled into Russia illegally, Ural Customs’ press service reports. The alleged offenders purchased 57 packets of cigarettes in Kyrgyzstan and then sent them to Yekaterinburg by plane. It turned out during a customs check at the airport’s cargo terminal that the cigarettes had no Russian excise duty stamps on them, which meant the items had been

UrBC, Moscow, March 25, 2019. The Central Bank of Russia decided to keep the key rate at 7.75% a year, the bank’s latest press release states. The Board of Directors’ meeting took place on March 22, 2019. ‘In February—March 2019, inflation is holding somewhat lower than the Bank of Russia’s expectations. Despite the fact that inflation expectations of households and businesses notably declined in February and March, they remain elevated. The contribution of the VAT increase to annual consumer price growth has largely materialised. However, deferred effects may manifest themselves in the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 25, 2019. The number of Russian nationals earning less than a living wage amounted to 18.9 million in 2018: this information was carried by Rosstat in its report on the correlation between Russians’ monetary incomes and the scale of the living wage and the number of low-income people living in Russia in the last quarter of 2018. The share of people living below poverty line came to 12.9% of the country’s entire population (one year earlier, the percentage was 13.2%). In the fourth quarter of 2018, the minimum wage was set at RUB 10,213 a month.

UrBC, Moscow, March 25, 2019. Russia’s Central Bank adjusted its net capital outflow estimates for the year 2018 from $67bn up to $76bn; additionally, the forecast for this year has been adjusted from $20bn up to $35bn, the bank reports. According to the CBR, Russia’s net capital outflow amounted to $76bn last year. As recently as December 2018, the bank expected the figures to stand around $67. The bank also says this year’s net capital outflow is expected to amount to $35bn rather than the $20bn originally expected in December. As for the years 2020 and 2021, the net capital outflow

UrBC, Chelyabinsk, March 22, 2019. ChelPipe Group, Almetyevsk Vocational School, and Russia’s Defense Ministry signed an agreement to allow the alumni of Tatarstan’s College of the Future Corporate Training Program to serve their army terms in Mirny, Samara Region. the training program gets hosted by ChelPipe Group’s member enterprise Alnas. According to the Group’s press service, forty new recruits will serve their terms in the MoD’s Army 14 Air Force & Air Defense unit. The new agreement is yet another measure to comply with the Russian President Vladimir Putin’s commission to the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 22, 2019. A new school will get built in Yekaterinburg’s District Akademicheskiy soon, RSG-Akademicheskoye’s press service refers to Vice Mayor of Yekaterinburg Alexei Biryulin as saying. According to Biryulin, the school will get commissioned in 2020. The construction of the district’s fifth school is now under way in Blizky Quarter. In terms of design, furnishings, and appliances, this is going to become one of Yekaterinburg’s best schools. The children and teachers will get a stadium, a library/research center, and well-equipped classrooms. The school is expected

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 22, 2019. The digital opportunity company MegaFon announced it was prepared to invest in the Ural-based startups as part of the EKB Startup Day program on March 23, the telecom company’s press service reports. IT businesses are invited to join the EKB Startup Day conference coordinated by the Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF) with MegaFon’s support. Yeltsin Center will host the event for the tech market players, investors, venture angels, and corporations. The conference participants will be ale to look at the market leaders’s success cases and learn

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 22, 2019. One MegaFon customer used 10 Gb more traffic on average in the last quarter of 2018 compared with the last quarter of 2017 (+40%), the telecom company’s press service reports. Out of MegaFon’s 75 million customers, 28 million use the Internet connection on a 4G-supporting device. The company improved its connection quality and upgraded its services last year to create Russia’s largest mobile network. By early 2019, MegaFon operated nearly 223,000 base stations all in all, with over a third of them supporting LTE formats. MegaFon’s revenues also rose by

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 22, 2019. The Smart City Standard has been adopted in Russia, and Yekaterinburg’s District Akademicheskiy is going to serve as one of the testing grounds for the launch of the standard, the district developer KORTROS Group’s press service reports. The agreement to this effect got signed by KORTROS Group of Companies and Russia’s Construction Ministry. The Smart City Standard comprises the following: urban management, smart housing services and utilities, urban environment innovations, smart public transport, smart public and environmental safety systems,

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 21, 2019. EVRAZ Holding Ural’s member enterprises improved working conditions for 4,000 metallurgical workers and miners last year. The company directed more than RUB 900 million to job safety and industrial safety in 2018, EVRAZ Holding Ural’s Corporate Relations Center reports. EVRAZ Nizhny Tagil Metallurgical Plant (EVRAZ NTMK) had the interlocking system LOTO installed at six of its departments last year to make sure the equipment cannot get started accidentally during repairs. More than 700 personal-use gas sensors got purchased for twenty-four divisions at the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 21, 2019. Ural Airlines are currently holding special price offers for their domestic and international flights, the air carrier’s press service says. You can get up to 50% off on your purchase if you book your tickets online at www.uralairlines.com, on Ural Airlines mobile app, and at online agents’ websites on March 20-22 (and also if you book over the phone and at booking offices on March 23-25). The discounted flights will get operated between March 21 and May 31 and between September 1 and December 25, 2019. The special offer holds for the following flights

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 21, 2019. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development (UBRD) and InSales are going to coordinate a workshop on the future of today’s retail business in Yekaterinburg. Talks will be given by experts from the UBRD, InSales, Russian Post, CDEK, Mail.ru Group, EKAM, and other companies. The workshop will take place at Summit Business Center at 51 Vosmoye Marta St on March 28, 2019, the bank’s press service reports. Every workshop participant will have an opportunity to look at real-life cases of successful online businesses. For one, the bank’s Acquiring

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, March 21, 2019. UiPath, the developer of the leading Robotic Process Automation (RPA) platform, praised MMK Group’s achievements in the area, the plant’s press service reports. RPA DAY! Conference, coordinated by QIWI, was held in Moscow in early March; MMK Group’s IT division MMK-Informservis set up its RPA Skills & Innovations Center in July 2018 and launched its first robot at MMK in September 2018 already. ‘Judging by the global RPA experience, the technology is a highly efficient way to make a business undergo digital transformation, which is actually the basis of

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 21, 2019. MegaFon’s infrastructure sustained all the peak loads and performed as usual during the 2019 Winter Universiade in Krasnoyarsk. The company’s 4G connection was about 20 Mbps fast on average; Yenisey Stadium, with tits 279 Mbps, had the fastest traffic of all, the company’s press service reports. ‘Every one in twenty students from the Urals went to take part in the Krasnoyarsk event. These 2019 Winter Universiade games proved the most large-scale mobile social function in Siberia’s entire record of public events,’ the press service says. Every MegaFon Ural

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 20, 2019. Ural Airlines are offering their customers an opportunity to travel from Almaty to Prague, Paris, Rome, Tel Aviv, Kaliningrad, and Simferopol via Moscow Region’s Zhukovsky Airport, with as little time in-between the two flights as is convenient. According to the air carrier’s press service, Ural Airlines launched their Almaty-Zhukovsky flight at the end of last year, so there are now plenty of convenient connecting flights for Kazakhstan-based travelers to choose from. ‘The flights get scheduled very conveniently, so that you’ll hardly notice the wait or

UrBC, Moscow, March 20, 2019. This week, the Central Bank of Russia carried a report on the sectors of economy that were primarily responsible for creating demand for shadow banking services last year, the CBR’s press service reports. ‘The Bank of Russia’s assessment suggests that last year the bulk of such dubious transactions were carried out by construction sector companies (29%) and service firms (security, cleaning, advertising – 21%),’ the bank’s website states. The retail/wholesale trade sectors (industrial goods and commodities) carried out 16% of such transactions each. ‘The

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 20, 2019. Rosatom’s TVEL’s Novouralsk-based member enterprise CentroTech Scientific & Production Association recently introduced a newer, safer, and more energy-efficient technology for making negative electrodes for cadmium-nickel generators at the plant, Ural Electrochemical Combine’s press service reports. The plant originally started looking into new ways to make the electrodes in order to cut back on the cost of materials, enhance work safety, increase the production’s technological efficiency, and make the process less labor-intensive. It took the company