‘The Russian Federation Supreme Court of Arbitration rejected the appeal of Home Credit and Finance Bank Ltd. for the third time. This means that the resolution made by the Ural Division of Rospotrebnadzor (the consumer rights watchdog) has been declared valid by three legal bodies,’ says Elena Bogacheva of Rospotrebnadzor. More and more people have been dissatisfied with the banking services lately; based on the number of complaints placed with the local division of Rospotrebnadzor and with Yekaterinburg Consumer Rights Committee, in most cases, this involves two certain banks, namely,

UralTransBank is the only large bank in Sverdlovsk Region with a decreasing loan portfolio, claims the rating compiled by the financial analysts of Severnaya Kazna on the basis of data provided by the largest banks of Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, Tyumen, and Perm Regions in January 2007. According to this rating, the loan portfolio of UralTransBank went down .2% in January 2007 and amounted to 6,028,371,000 RUR on February 1, 2007.

As regards Ural Federal District, the natural gas industry and the trunk pipelines had more accidents last year than before, whereas the chemical enterprises had fewer accidents, and so did companies using lifting equipment, reports the spokesperson for the Ural division of Rostechnadzor (the state environmental and technological safety watchdog). The total material damage classed as real loss was estimated at 23,575,200 RUR, which is 20% more than in 2005. TyumenTransGas was the one that sustained most losses (17,189,900 RUR). 70.8% of industrial accidents in Ural Federal District were

‘We are worried about the possible social outcomes of the dispute at Nizhnetagilskiy Metalware Plant. This enterprise plays a great part in the city’s life and economy, and we can’t let people lose their jobs and salaries due to this dispute. The council is now trying as best it can to prevent this from happening,’ says Alexander Soloviev, the chief press officer of Nizhniy Tagil city administration. ‘The upcoming council meeting will be devoted to the issue of the plant, among other things,’ Mr. Soloviev said. The representatives of Nizhnetagilskiy Metalware Plant declared the other day that

The regional division of Rostechnadzor (the state environmental and technological safety watchdog) looked at the performance of local industrial enterprises in 2006. There were eight accidents (compared to six in 2005) and 245 incidents (compared to 212 in 2005) altogether. The number of people injured at work went down from 328 in 2005 to 216 in 2006, but the number of fatal cases doubled (18 deaths in 2006 compared to a year earlier), reports Rostechnadzor’s press officer.

Regional car sales rose from 75,000 items in 2005 to 100,000 items in 2006. Dwellers of Yekaterinburg, for instance, bought 38,000 Russian automobiles and 42,000 foreign ones last year, reports the spokesperson for the Governor of Sverdlovsk Region. According to the regional statisticians, the ratio came to 46 cars per 100 average families (compared to 33 cars per 100 families as recently as 2004). Over 50 official foreign cars dealers and 200 Russian cars ones are operating in Sverdlovsk Region at the moment; there are 63 auto shows in the region altogether, 46 of which are based in

‘62% of our equipment is obsolete,’ the spokesperson for SverdlovEnergo said to UrBC. ‘This year, the company is going to double its investments in the equipment modernization, reconstruction, and construction of the new electricity supply network facility; this means we’ll have to invest 2 billion RUR against 701 million last year. We are hoping to obtain the money through long-term bonded debt, to be paid back with the help of connection fee (that is, the specific payments from the interested consumers),’ the spokesperson explained.

‘If a retail chain claims it’s eager to do business with the regional food producers, this claim is not supported by any actions. In reality, Yekaterinburg-based retailers ask for a significant entrance fee and retro-bonuses, or discounts,’ says Pavel Lyalkov, the Sales and Marketing Director of the local oil and mayonnaise producing company. According to Mr. Lyalkov, this is true of local, federal, and multinational players alike, no producer can avoid facing this. ‘The thing is, today’s grocery retailers are developing very rapidly, and bonuses are a way of developing their network. It’s

According to the Central Bank of Russia, the volume of loans given by UralFinPromBank to natural persons for a term of 91 to 180 days went down 93.5% (from 72.005 million RUR to 4.611 million) in September-December 2006.

The students of Ural State Architectural Academy are going to be awarded for winning in the competition for the best architectural design of Academic construction area of Yekaterinburg. The ceremony has been scheduled for February 22, 2007. The projects designed by the winners will become part of the final paper currently developed by Renova Stroy Group in cooperation with Valode & Pistre, the French company that developed the general town-planning scheme for the would-be Academic district. This means that the young and promising undergraduates have been given a chance to reveal their

MegaFon, the mobile operator, launched a new All-Russian tariff scheme known as Home. The name reflects the scheme’s major advantage: it offers good prices for outgoing calls within the operator’s network. ‘Now that new landline fees have been introduced, using the mobile is often more advantageous, especially if the people you call most frequently are using the same operator,’ says MegaFon’s Sales Manager Larissa Tkachuk. ‘The sole reason why the new tariff scheme has been created was to give our subscribers a chance not to think about money when communicating with their relatives and

‘15,000 enterprises and sole traders paid less than the subsistence wage worth of official salary in 2006,’ Head of Federal Tax Service in Sverdlovsk Region Gennady Bezrukov announced at a press conference. ‘Following our inspections, 91% of these businesses introduced pay rises to the subsistence wage or more, but the region’s economically depressed areas still have companies with the same low salaries,’ Mr. Bezrukov said. ‘At the same time, a number of companies came up with the new ways of paying very low official salaries such as outsourcing and outstaffing: companies are set up as

‘We have been cooperating with two federal grocery retailers, that is, Ramstore and Grossmart, as well as with most Yekaterinburg-based retail chains, excluding Kupets, and are currently in the middle of negotiations with Kupets and Auchan,’ Deputy CEO for Economics and Commerce of Good Taste Meatpacking Plant Elena Shanina said to UrBC. ‘We don’t do business with Metro Cash and Carry because we were unable to reach a suitable agreement at the time, and we never tried afterwards, since some other producers had problems supplying goods to Metro,’ Ms Shanina noted. ‘We have never been faced

‘SKB-Bank received the national solvency rating last year when RusRating gave us a B+. Besides, we were rated B2 by Moody’s in the fourth quarter of 2006,’ says SKB-Bank’s Chairman Vladimir Pukhov. ‘This is a very impressive level for a bank to achieve, and it is a sign of the business developing quite stably. Having these ratings, our bank can now hope for more favorable interest rates when borrowing on the open market. We are ready to go for a bonded debt issue, and we expect to float a 1-billion RUR loan in the first half of 2007,’ Mr. Pukhov said. ‘According to the rating presented by

‘Sverdlovsk Region paid over 170 billion RUR in taxes last year, which exceeds the figures for 2005 by 32%. The money influx rate increased by 32% (cf. Russian average of 25%,’ Head of Federal Tax Service in Sverdlovsk Region Gennady Bezrukov announced at a press conference. ’51 billion RUR worth of taxes went to the Russian Federation budget, 64 billion RUR wet to the regional budget, and 17 billion RUR were distributed among the region’s municipal enterprises,’ Mr. Bexrukov said. ‘Most of the payments came as income tax, VAT, and unified social tax,’ he added.

A press conference devoted to the performance of the State Environmental Surveillance division in Sverdlovsk Region and of the regional division of Rostechnadzor (the state environmental watchdog) was held on February 20, 2007. The event was attended by Nikolai Krupinin, Deputy Head of Rostechnadzor in Ural Federal District. 1,229,000 tons of pollutants were dumped in Sverdlovsk Region’s atmosphere last year, of which 43.7% were released by the local metallurgical enterprises, and 35% were emitted by the fuel and energy complex. ‘Ferrous metallurgical companies are responsible for the lion’s

Over 100,000 square meters of storehouses will be commissioned in Yekaterinburg annually beginning from 2009, Deputy Mayor Viktor Konteev announced at a meeting today. According to Mr. Konteev, only 47,000 square meters of storehouses were commissioned last year, which was not enough, given the existing shortage estimated at 700,000 to 900,000 square meters. The local authorities have already allotted four patches of land for the would-be logistics terminals in Yekaterinburg. All in all, only 62 grocery wholesalers and 73 non-food wholesalers possess storage areas of more than 500 square

Investments by both natural persons and legal entities in Ural Bank of Sberbank of Russia kept going up in 2006. The total value of natural person accounts amounted to 97 billion RUR on January 1, 2007, which exceeds the figures for 2005 by 24 billion, or by 30%. The amount of money deposited by legal entities doubled last year, and thus reached the point of 55 billion RUR, reports the bank’s press officer.

According to AviaPort.Ru, JACDEC (Jet Airliner Crash Data Evaluation Centre) has recently published its Top 50 safest air carriers rating. This rating was compiled with the help of a special method that takes into account the number of crashes a carrier has had, the total passenger traffic, and for how long the airline has been operating. JACDEC’s database includes sixteen Russian carriers, and Ural Airlines got on the list of the safest ones: its rating comes to zero and it has had no casualties so far. As for the other Russian airlines, Pulkovo Airlines got a zero rating (and 184 victims),

‘Regional companies won’t be affected by the temporary embargo on import of Russian poultry to Azerbaijan,’ A. Feoktistov, the spokesperson for Sverdlovsk Region Ministry for Agriculture and Food, said to UrBC. ‘Our enterprises are currently supplying poultry to Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, but not to Azerbaijan,’ he said. The State Veterinary Service under the Ministry of Agriculture of Azerbaijan introduced a temporary embargo on the import of Russian poultry to the country due to the recent outbreaks of bird flu in the vicinities of Moscow.