UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 7, 2019. ChelPipe Group completed its investment project on upgrading Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant’s Cold-Deformed Pipe Facility, the Group’s press service reports. The Group’s member enterprise Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant (PNTZ) now has new stainless steel pipe treatment equipment supplied by the Czech company Prestar. The investment project required more than RUB 15 million all in all. The modern treatment unit makes it possible to cut pipes (diameter: 83 mm to 162 mm) with very high precision and at a great speed. The investment project required more than RUB 15

UrBC, Moscow, March 7, 2019. Russian State Duma adopted a bill to ban hostels in apartments and houses in the third and final reading on March 6, 2019. The news has by now been published at www.regulation.gov.ru. The bill concerns the amendments to Article 17 (Part 3) of the Russian Federation Housing Code which complement the formula ‘setting up industrial production facilities within apartments or houses is not allowed’ with ‘or hotels’. Another clause has been introduced as well: ‘The use of an apartment in an apartment building as hotel accommodation is not allowed.’ This means that, to

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 6, 2019. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development (UBRD) is now one of Russia's first banks to introduce Mir Pay for their customers. The mobile payment service has been designed by Mir to allow the cardholders to make proximity card-type payments with their smartphones. The service is now available to Mir card holders who use any Android-based (6.0 and up), NFC-supporting smartphone. According to the bank's press service, you can use any UBRD Mir card (both the proximity kind and other card types) to register with Mir Pay. Mir Pay can be used for

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 6, 2019. EVRAZ Nizhny Tagil Metallurgical Plant (EVRAZ NTMK) started making fourteen new rolled steel section varieties in 2018, EVRAZ Holding Ural reports. The plant's Wheel Band Department now makes seven more kinds of rail wheels. The Heavy Mill Department makes a new semi-finished pipe variety (diameter: 156 mm). The Rail Department started making rails for the underground lines. The Beam-Rolling Department mastered three new kinds of H-beams: the UC 15K for the Russian market and НЕ260 and НЕ320 varieties that comply with the EU standards. Last year, the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 6, 2019. Students on ChelPipe Group’s Future of White-Coated Metallurgy Corporate Training Program and employees of the Group’s Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant (PNTZ) met the grand master of chess and multiple chess world champion Anatoly Karpov at ChelPipe Group’s Training Center. According to the Group’s press service, Karpov talked about his success story and his plans to develop his chain of children’s chess schools all over the world; he also did a Q&A session with the audience and played a game of chess with the event’s youngest attendee, a seven-year-old

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 6, 2019. Four schools built in Yekaterinburg's District Akademicheskiy meet all the modern requirements and offer excellent opportunities for studying, sports, and extracurricular activities, says Yekaterinburg Duma deputy and Director of Akademicheskiy Management Company Nikolai Smirnyagin. 'These schools excel not only in terms of furnishing and facilities but also in terms of education quality. They are now among the city's best in this respect. The student's Russian State Exam scores prove this very well: School 14, for example, has the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 6, 2019. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development (UBRD) got featured among the world’s best banks and among Russia’s top ten banks in the Forbes magazine’s recent rating, the bank’s press service reports. The rating was based on a number of ranking criteria, including customer satisfaction, trust the customers and potential customers have in the bank, service quality, digital services development, and the employees’ expertise in terms of financial advice to customers. The magazine’s analysts surveyed around 40,000 people who bank with banks from

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 5, 2019. Ural Airlines will be operating three more flights from Blagoveshchensk to Moscow (via Yekaterinburg) and back on March 11-24, 2019, the air carrier's press service reports. The flights will complement the existing flight U6 300/299 and will get operated on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays (U6 30 Blagoveshchensk-Yekaterinburg-Moscow) and Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays (U6 29 Moscow-Yekaterinburg-Blagoveshchensk). Prices start from RUB 12,500 (one way) and RUB 19,600 (round trip). The state-subsidized air travel discount program for people living in

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 5, 2019. Tyumen Region Customs officers detained a car full of counterfeit children’s toys near Kazakhstan’s border in Kurgan Region; the automobile was headed for Yekaterinburg, Ural Customs’ press service reports. There were 16,000 kg of children’s toys and clothing with Fila, Tommy Hilfiger, and Disney logos on them in the car; the items were supposed to have arrived at Yekaterinburg’s shops in the nearest future. The trademark owners have already confirmed their logos had been used illegally. They estimated the damage done to the business at RUB 2 million.

UrBC, Moscow, March 5, 2019. The price of a one-bedroom apartment currently comes to RUB 3.816 million on Yekaterinburg's existing home market, which exceeds the figures for one year earlier by 5%, Domofond.ru's own research findings indicate, their press service says. This price increase makes Yekaterinburg No.14 among Russia's seventy-five largest cities/housing markets. According to Domofond.ru's pricing statistics, the price of one-bedroom homes rose in seventy-four out of seventy-five Russian cities. The increase ranged between 1% in Nizhniy Tagil and 22% in Kazan.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 5, 2019. A direct Yekaterinburg-Kaluga flight got launched on March 2, Sverdlovsk Region's Information Policy Department reports. The flights will be available every Saturday and Tuesday. Departure (Koltsovo Airport, Yekaterinburg): 7:20 PM local time. The flight will get operated on the 50-seat Bombardier CRJ-100/200 and will be two and a half hours long.

UrBC, Moscow, March 5, 2019. The Central Bank of Russia purchased RUB 12.5 billion worth of foreign currency for the Finance Ministry, the bank's website states. The CBR intends to direct RUB 194 billion to foreign currency purchases on February7-March 6, 2019 altogether, with the daily purchase amount at the equivalent of RUB 9.7 billion. On February 1, the bank also resumed the foreign currency purchases that had been scheduled for the year 2018 and then postponed. The purchase amount planned originally came to around $30bn. The daily purchase amount for these additional transactions

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, March 4, 2019. President of the Russian Union of Industrialists & Entrepreneurs’ Chelyabinsk Region division and Chair of Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) Board of Directors Viktor Rashnikov is going to coordinate the Union Board’s meeting on March 1, 2019. The agenda of the meeting covers Ekologia, a national environmental project, and diversification programs within the defense industry. According to MMK’s Information & PR Department, the meeting will be held at MMK’s ski resort Abzakovo. Chelyabinsk Region Government’s top officials, representatives of

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 4, 2019. According to MegaFon, the amount of online traffic its Urals-based business customers used in the last three months increased by 1.5 times; also, increasingly more users choose the speediest option of the 4G network, the telecom company’s press service reports. Companies operating in Yugra and Yamal are currently the top Internet traffic consumers; companies operating in Sverdlovsk Region are the third largest traffic market in Ural Federal District. St. Valentine’s Day proved the busiest online communication day in February: MegaFon’s Internet workload (as

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 4, 2019. Visa is launching a special offer for the customers of the Ural Bank of Reconstruction & Development (UBRD), the bank’s press service reports. To join Visa’s prize-drawing lottery, you need to use your UBRD Visa card (or a smartphone that has the UBRD Visa payment app) to pay for your shopping on February 18-March 31, 2019. The receipts need to get uploaded to pay.visa.ru. The more receipts you upload, the higher your chances are of winning a prize. The cardholders could win up to RUB 10,000 for shopping at any store and up to RUB 100,000 for shopping

UrBC, Moscow, March 4, 2019. According to the Central Bank of Russia’s January issue of Economy: facts, assessments and comments, the annual GDP growth can be expected to reach 1% to 1.5% in the first quarter of 2019 and 1.2%-1.7% by the end of the year. In terms of volume, Russia’s GDP rose by 2.3% in 2018, which was somewhat better than the CBR had predicted (1.5% to 2%) and also higher than could be expected from the economy’s long-term potential. In many respects, this was brought about by temporary factors (including, for example, the completion of certain large-scale infrastructure

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 4, 2019. Sverdlovsk Region’s public prosecution authorities uncovered a number of grave offenses in the civil service sector last year, their press service reports. Following the public prosecutors’ reports, 22 officials from among Sverdlovsk Region’s power structures (including one Sverdlovsk Region Legislative Assembly deputy) got fired due to loss of trust; 10 deputies of local-level Dumas got removed before the end of their elected term. The prosecution authorities also kept working to have the property of civil servants seized by the state in cases where the

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 1, 2019. According to MegaFon, there are now over two million 4G-supporting gadgets in Sverdlovsk Region right now. The new gadgets get registered faster than the LTE-supporting ones: every one in seven 4G-supporting gadget users bought two devices in the last twelve months. MegaFon’s press service says large-display smartphones by Samsung, Vertex, Xiaomi, Apple, and Honor proved the market’s bestsellers. Their owner uses 9 Gb worth of online traffic a month on average, which is 33% more than one year earlier. ‘Online content gets ‘heavier’: our customers are

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 1, 2019. The accounts payable of Sverdlovsk Region’s businesses (excluding small enterprises) amounted to RUB 1,053.5bn on December 31, 2018; RUB 72.1bn out of this amount (6.8%) was overdue A/P, Sverdlovskstat reports. The amount of A/P shrank by 0.7% in the course of one month; that of overdue A/C decreased by 14.5%. The share of companies with overdue A/P came to 19.5% of all businesses operating in the area. 85.7% of overdue A/P stemmed from money due to suppliers and contractors for their goods, or services, or performed jobs. 18.6% of reporting businesses had

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 1, 2019. Sverdlovsk Region-based banks issued 1,773 car loans to local applicants in January 2019, which exceeded the figures for one year earlier by 8.2%, the National Credit History Bureau’s press service reports. In Russia on the whole, the number of new car loans came to 49,400 in January 2019 (up 7.7% on January 2018). ‘Even though the number of car loans rose this January compared with January 2018, the increase was still less prominent than in the year 2018 on the whole. This mostly has to do with the fact that state-subsidized car buying programs came to an