Officers of Chelyabinsk customs withdrew about 230,000 RUR worth of undeclared goods at Bugristoye automobile customs check, Ural Customs Administration reports. A Kazakh citizen was trying to leave Russia with 11.3 tons of cut-up marble plates whose cost was estimated at 39,000 RUR. In addition, three trucks going to Russia from Kazakhstan were transporting 34.6 tons of potatoes worth 190,000 RUR altogether. The owner of the shipment never declared this produce, which is against the current legislation, so the cargo had to be withdrawn and stored at the customs warehouse; the customs

RENOVA Stroy Group is going to present its Academic Construction Project at Global City 2007, an international forum to be held in Lyon on May 14-16, 2007, the company's press officer reports. Global City is an international forum for business executives and members of city councils devoted to strategies, new methods and specific projects in the field of municipal improvement. The forum is a globally recognized place to present one’s large town planning projects and share one’s experience in dealing with construction challenges related to urban development. The agenda of the forum

Four-room apartments in Yekaterinburg experienced the greatest price growth in January-April 2007, says Ural Chamber of Real Estate. The price of one square meter of dwelling has gone up 10.96% since the beginning of the year and now comes to 66,119 RUR, whereas prices for three-, two-, and one-room apartments have only increased by 6.92%, 4.56%, and 3.45%, respectively, so prices now come to 65,332 RUR, 66,087 RUR, and 73,669 RUR per square meter of dwelling. Even though these are one-room apartments where prices are the highest, their price growth has been very slow; this was not the case

URSA Bank assessed its performance in April 2007. Its balance sheet total reached 151.9 billion RUR on May 1, 2007, which exceeds the figures for a year earlier by 3.7 times. The bank’s net wealth went up 3 times and reached 103.9 billion RUR. The bank’s resource base made up of investments by international financial bodies grew 5.1 times, coming to 41.9 billion RUR; this money is traditionally used to develop the company’s own lending schemes as well as programs supported by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The overall volume of URSA Bank’s lending operations tripled,

Rostourism has recently published lists of travel agents who managed or failed to fill in their applications for United Federal Register correctly. There are 55 companies in the first category and 4 companies in the second one. Quite remarkably, there have been no Sverdlovsk Region-based operators among the applicants so far.

SKB-Bank was rated 16th among Russian factor companies in terms of transferred money last year. The rating was compiled by the Expert magazine; they believe the local factoring market doubled in 2006, reaching $11 billion, which is more impressive than in the case of its East European counterparts; moreover, provided the current growth rate remains the same, the market is expected to become comparable with the ones based in Western Europe. This success has so far remained unique to this country’s financial services markets. The Expert magazine says SKB-Bank’s factoring activity exceeded 1.131

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov signed the 2008-2010 Federal Property Privatization Plan on April 29, 2007. The plan covers a number of enterprises based in Sverdlovsk Region, namely, Beloyarskoye fuel complex (8,623 shares, or 100% of its authorized capital, are to be sold by auction); Kamensk-Uralskiy fuel complex (67,700 shares, or 100% of its authorized capital, are to be sold by auction), Kamyshlov timber and fuel enterprise (172,200 shares, or 100% of its authorized capital, are to be sold by auction), IT and electronics company based in Nizhniy Tagil (22,460 shares, or 100% of

Sverdlovsk Region’s law-enforcement officers keep monitoring the local companies’ compliance with the wage-paying regulations; they have already revealed 1,212 wage arrears offenses since the beginning of 2007. This resulted in 298 claims regarding the payment of salaries that were supposed to have been paid to workers but never were that were placed with courts. The total damage is estimated at 1.8 million RUR. 247 administrative suits have been filed so far, with offenders having to pay more than 40,000 RUR worth of fines. 102 people will be prosecuted, 167 executives have received

Yekaterinburg-based dwellings, production sites, and social welfare buildings are to get heating cut-outs on May 10, 2007; hospitals, kindergartens and other socially important buildings will be the last to be cut out. Mayor of Yekaterinburg Arkadiy Chernetskiy has already signed a provision regarding the end of the heating season and issued some proposals related to the heating season 2007/2008. The city’s Fuel and Energy Administration has drawn up a schedule for hydraulic tests to be given to all the heat networks in Yekaterinburg. The schedule also provides for seven pressure and

A 20-ton shipment of beef trim imported from Germany and 21 tons of slab bacon from Spain were found to contain salmonella, the press officer of Rosselkhoznadzor (the state agricultural watchdog) reports. This is the reason why Rosselkhoznadzor decided to impose temporary bans on meat import from German D EZ 302 EWG and Spanish ES-10.09362/BA CE and asked the German and Spanish veterinary authorities to investigate the incidents.

'The Bank of Russia determined the exchange rates at 25.73 RUR per one U.S. dollar and 35.03 RUR per euro on May 9, 2007. Within the next two days, the U.S. and European monetary authorities are expected to take their decisions regarding changes in the current rates; in the meantime, the issue is open up to speculation,’ SKB-Bank’s employee Sergey Vetyshev says. 'Most analysts believe the U.S. Federal Reserve System meeting on the open markets will result in the rate remaining the same; yet the unemployment statistics published the other day (the unemployment rate has gone up this

Federal State Agency “Land Cadastral Chamber” looked into the results of inspections aimed at checking compliance with the land law in 2006. The agency’s officers conducted 164,797 inspections last year, most of which took place in Moscow Region (13,376), Bashkortostan (10,296), Kemerov Region (6,855), Nizhniy Novgorod Region (5,717), Tatarstan (5,156), Sverdlovsk Region (5,089), Krasnodar Region (4,915), and Samara Region (4,575). The inspections held in these regions amount to 34% of all inspections conducted in Russia. The following places turned out to have the highest number of offenses:

Bank24.ru has successfully paid off its first promissory note project tranche; the bank was able to attract investments from some Moscow-based banks as well as from banks located in Russia’s largest cities, namely, Novosibirsk, Krasnodar, Kazan, and Ufa. The loan was coordinated by BrokerCreditService Consulting, the bank’s press officer reports. 'The successful completion of the first tranche proves that our promissory notes enjoy nice demand and can be an effective investment tool throughout the entire country. We intend to keep earning a favorable reputation on the financial market

Bank, the statistics newsletter of the Bank of Russia in Sverdlovsk Region, published its report on the local foreign currency market in 2006. On the whole, the number of operations on the market exceeded that for 2005 by 1.8%. The number of banks’ transactions involving foreign cash went down 1.7% in the last quarter of the year compared to the previous quarter. Natural persons withdrew 17.6% more money from their foreign currency accounts in October-December 2006 compared to the previous quarter and 1.7% more money in 2006 compared to a year earlier. At the same time, they invested 5.1%

Moody’s Investors Service promoted URSA Bank from B1/NP to Ba3/NP in terms of foreign currency deposits and from E+ to D- in terms of BFSR on May 4, 2007, the bank’s press officer reports.

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by SberInvestBank to sole traders for 181 days to 1 year went down 9% (from 10.95 million RUR to 9.9 million) in January-March 2007.

First Deputy Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government and Minister for Economics and Labor Galina Kovaleva presented her report on the region’s socio-economic development and prospective medium-term consolidated balance-sheet for 2008-2010 to Sverdlovsk Region Government. The Ministry customarily came up with two developmental proposals; one of them presupposes a less favorable combination of the area’s internal and external strengths and weaknesses, the other one is targeted at innovation and progress. According to this scenario, Sverdlovsk Region’s gross regional product is expected to grow 7%

Severnaya Kazna announced it was having problems with its Internetbank project; the bank said they had been struggling with it since May 3, 2007. What is more, Severnaya Kazna mentioned some e-banking trouble on Sunday, April 29, 2007 when Internetbank and Client-Bank were not accessible to any users between 9 AM and 4 PM. Some short-term breakdowns could also have occurred afterwards, the bank admitted. The bank’s customers report e-banking is mostly inconvenient because of the difficulties related to getting access to one’s data during the day. According to the corporate website statistics,

Ural Federal District-based customs services transferred 3.137 billion RUR to the federal budget in April 2007, which exceeds the target figures (2.706 billion) by 15.9%. The share of customs duties imposed on imported goods amounted to 2.671 billion RUR, which exceeds the target figures by 14.5%, the spokesperson for Ural Customs Administration reports. Overall, 11.729 billion RUR have been transferred to the Russian Federation budget since the beginning of the year, which exceeds the target figures (11.217 billion) by 4.6%.

Following the governmental provision on foreign worker quotas for 2008, all of Sverdlovsk Region’s employers were supposed to place their applications with the nearest job center before May 1, 2007. Given, however, the Ministry of Healthcare and Social Development’s procrastination with agreeing on the foreign workers application format, Sverdlovsk Region Government interdepartmental committee decided to extend the deadline to May 25, 2007. Every employer willing to use foreign workers must place a standard application with their job center, for authorities to decide on the regional quotas,