Bulgaria has demanded recently that Cyrillic alphabet should be used to inscribe the name of the Euro on the coins. At the moment, the coin heads have a unique design in each of the EU member states, while the tails are the same everywhere. The Bulgarians insist that their coins should have the word евро rather than Euro on them, SKB-Bank’s press officer reports. «Each member state embodies its national and cultural uniqueness in the coins; Italian one-Euro coins, for instance, bear a copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s Harmonious Man, Austrian ones have a portrait of Mozart on them. As for the

Sberbank’s Ural branch had 118.9 billion RUR in its individual customers’ deposit accounts on October 1, 2007, while the number of these accounts came to more than 22 million. In the meantime, the volume of deposits only amounted to 96.8 billion RUR at the beginning of the year, which means the figures went up by over 22 billion RUR over just nine months, the bank’s press officer reports. People living in Yekaterinburg deposited a total of 21 billion RUR with Sberbank, and Sverdlovsk Region dwellers altogether placed 45.4 billion RUR there. The Ural branch’s Deposit Management Director Marina

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin allocated 800 million RUR to all of the region’s municipalities so that they could invest in municipal engineering. In addition, Chelyabinsk was given 100 million RUR for municipal improvements. The spokesperson for the Governor reports this money will be spent on dump trucks, trucks meant for tree-cutting, street-cleaning tractors, water carriers, lift trucks, front loaders, paving compactors, snow-removers, excavators, and dumpers. Everything is expected to be acquired before the end of this year.

«We are currently carrying out an additional investigation of a negative publicity campaign targeted against BALTMAN chain stores. The inquiry will probably have been completed by the end of next week», says Yekaterinburg’s Deputy Prosecutor Alexander Yurovskikh. He reports that further inquiry was needed because the experts involved differed greatly in their conclusions. The incident itself occurred on September 7, 2007 when billboards calling for boycotting BALTMAN chain stores appeared in the streets of Yekaterinburg.

The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development raised the interest rates on its Premium deposit scheme. This type of deposit provides for an increased interest rate in the last two months of the deposit period. Now the annual interest rate comes to 14% in the fifth and sixth month of the deposit period in Yekaterinburg and a number of other cities, the bank’s press officer reports. The minimum amount of money one can deposit comes to 5,000 RUR, $200, or (200. The interest is calculated on a monthly basis, and the customer is free to either withdraw this money or keep it with the bulk of the

Sverdlovsk Region’s Public Prosecutor Yuri Ponomarev held a meeting aimed at assessing the authority’s performance in January-September 2007 on October 17, 2007. It was reported at the meeting that the number of crimes committed in Sverdlovsk Region went down by 7.6% compared to a year earlier, while the number of grave offenses and felonies went down by 18.5% and 9.4%, respectively. At the same time, the share of detected crimes rose from 38% to 41.5%. Still, the Prosecutor said that Ural Region was nevertheless Russia’s second most crime-prone area, Moscow being No.1. Therefore it could be

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by Ural Interregional Bank to natural persons for over 3 years went down by 12.49% (from 14.693 million RUR to 12.857 million RUR) in January-September 2007.

«The Unified State Automated Information System is going to be updated on November 1, 2007. The problem is that the system is quite complicated, so a company, however experienced employees it may have, will not be able to master it in only two months it has been given», Sverdlovsk Region Minister of Trade, Provision, and Services Vera Solovieva says. «The new system is bound to cause industrial stoppages, and this, in its turn, may lead to the shortage of strong drinks on the market and therefore to an increase in prices. Most Ural stores aren’t prepared to work under the new conditions. The

Ural Airlines’ passenger turnover came to 2,426,523,000 passenger-kilometers in three quarters of 2007, which is 15% better than a year earlier, the carrier’s press officer reports. «An airline’s passenger turnover indicates the number of passengers flown times the distance covered by each of the passengers», the company explains. Ural Airlines flew 980,000 passengers in January-September 2007 and operated more than 2,200 international flights, 650 flights to and from the CIS, and 5,600 domestic flights. The airline’s passenger turnover growth figures are 5% better than the Russian average.

Head of Fuel and Energy Administration Andrei Scherbinin reported it to the city council that all of Yekaterinburg’s dwellings (8,500 buildings) began to be heated by October 4, 2007. However, there were some problems with buildings belonging to Sverdlovsk Region Railways and to the military. Then, it turned out to be somewhat difficult to service the mains that were more or less abandoned by their official proprietors, since the federal law adopted this year prohibits spending any municipal money on fixing them.

On October 17, 2007, winners of Ultimaratio, the annual reports contest, received their awards. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development won in the Best Annual Report category. The main idea behind this contest was to promote the principles of business transparency and informational openness, which is seen as one of the indicators of a company’s great corporate culture and social awareness. This year, Ural Treasures Bank, SKB-Bank, the Urals and Volga Interregional Company (MRSK), Concern Kalina, Yekaterinburg Electrical Networks Company, Sverdlovenergo, SverdlovEnergoSbyt, East

SKB-Bank has recently raised the maximum amount of money one could borrow from a bank using the Loan without Warrantors scheme to 200,000 RUR. Besides, the maximum period of a loan has been prolonged to three years. SKB-Bank’s loan portfolio (in terms of loans given to natural persons) exceeded 9.7 billion RUR on October 1, 2007, which made it possible for the company to outstrip its rivals and become Sverdlovsk Region’s largest bank and Ural Federal District’s third largest bank in terms of their loan portfolio.

Sverdlovsk Region Government got down to trying to stabilize the essential food prices. In order to do this, it’s about to sign a special agreement with the food producers and trading businesses regarding the maximum permissible trade markup. The agreement will be signed after the government looks into how justified the price growth actually was in August and September 2007. The research to this extent is now being conducted by an ad hoc team of experts comprising representatives of the Regional Power Engineering Committee and the region’s Ministry of Agriculture.

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by SberInvestBank to sole traders for 1 to 3 years went down by 46.56% (from 13.1 million RUR to 7 million RUR) in January-September 2007.

Ural Airlines looked at the results of its activity in September 2007. The airline’s press officer reports they operated 1,118 flights and flew about 140,000 passengers in September 2007 (which is 15% better than a year earlier). In addition, the carrier handled more than 550,000 kilograms of cargo, 62,000 kilograms of mail, and 25,000 kilograms of excess baggage. The carrier’s passenger load factor amounted to 78%, its revenue load to 70%; both figures exceed the ones for September 2007 by 3%.

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by Pervouralsk Joint Stock Commercial Bank to sole traders for 1 to 3 years went down by 17.52% (from 39.581 million RUR to 646,000 RUR) in January-September 2007.

«The introduction of some new excise duty stamps in 2008 is not likely to result in an increase in strong drink prices; all the expenses related to installation of the new equipment and stamping the bottles are supposed to be borne by the producers themselves», Director of Vinomania Ltd Nina Chikurova said to UrBC. On October 16, 2007, the State Duma adopted a bill that states all strong drinks bottles must have a new excise duty stamp beginning from January 1, 2007. «These new stamps will probably banish some of the adulterated wine from the market, even though it will definitely be

The amount of bad debt UralTransBank has in terms of consumer loans reached 116.393 million RUR on October 1, 2007, which exceeds the figures for January 1, 2007 by 2.08%. In the meantime, the share of bad debt in VUZ Bank’s loan portfolio came to 3.7%. This information is contained in a report on the consumer loan portfolio growth dynamics in Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, and Kurgan Regions and in Perm Territory in January-August 2007; this report is available at Severnaya Kazna’s official website.

Russian Banks have offered their customers 10.968 trillion RUR worth of loans in foreign currency since January 2007, the federal statisticians report. Enterprises and organizations of all sorts received the lion’s share of this money, that is, 7,294.6 trillion RUR; natural persons were given 2,679.2 trillion RUR in the form of loans, or 25% of the total amount. Apart from that, the volume of interbank loans reached 665.4 billion RUR. The volume of loans Russian banks provided their customers with went up by 24.8% in January-September 2007. Even though loans given to private individuals

«The Czech Republic is the best-selling holiday destination in Yekaterinburg; people go to there for both guided tours and spa treatment. I believe having to collect somewhat more papers for a visa application and having to wait three extra days are not going to affect the popularity of these tours too much. People have actually got used to this time-consuming procedures that can take up to a fortnight already. Anyways, nearly all European countries have signed the Schengen agreement by now», says Inna Averyanova, Director of Inna Tour Travel Agency. «The Czech Republic’s entering the