UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 23, 2018. MegaFon now has more mobile experts available in Sverdlovsk Region, the ISP and mobile carrier reports. MegaFon’s professional telecom consultants are now working at thirteen more mobile supermarkets. The new outlets got opened in Yekaterinburg, Verkhnyaya Salda, Zarechny, Kamyshlov, Nevyansk, Nizhniy Tagil, and Pervouralsk. In Yekaterinburg alone, more experts are now available at stores in Alatyr Shopping Mall, Greenwich Shopping Mall, and Belka Market, as well as in smaller outlets in Uralmash and Staraya Sortirovka. MegaFon’s analysts relied on their

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 22, 2018. SKB-Bank and a number of other Russian financial market players signed a Memorandum of Cooperation at the Finopolis Forum in Sochi on October 18; the goal is to work on the development of Marketplace Project together, the bank’s press service reports. SKB-Bank’s customers can now access and purchase the bank’s products online, from anywhere in the world. Marketplace offers a customer full information on their accounts and the money in them and allows for online account management. SKB-Bank keeps working on making its services as hi tech as possible and

UrBC, Chelyabinsk, October 22, 2018. Actual Accomplishments, a project coordinated by Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Boris Dubrovsky, is currently being implemented in District Nagaybaksky: the area’s long-term water supply problems are finally over, Southern Urals Government’s Press Service & Information Department reports. The local authorities also keep working to improve their settlements’ infrastructure and create better living conditions for the locals. ‘Actual Accomplishments are in full progress in Chelyabinsk Region. I decided to allocate even more funding for the project next

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 22, 2018. Yekaterinburg’s new home market supply is as large as ever, with over 20,000 apartments currently for sale. New home prices rose by 4.5% in the last nine months, Ural Real Estate Chamber reports. According to the Chamber’s analyst Mikhail Khorkov, there are plenty of interesting housing projects to choose from; the supply structure, however, is now markedly different. At the beginning of the year, for example, there were over 4,000 homes for sale in newly commissioned buildings. In the fall, the number dropped down to 2,400 apartments. The market supply

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 22, 2018. 3,048,000 Sverdlovsk Region-based infrastructure facilities will have to undergo a cadastral appraisal next year, Sverdlovsk Region’s Ministry for Public Property Management’s press service reports. The constituency is getting ready to start the procedures at the moment. ‘The Tax Code amendments the Russian Government adopted on January 1, 2015 state that private taxpayers must start paying a property tax based on their assets’ cadastral value by January 1, 2020 at the latest (Article 402 of Russia’s Tax Code). They are currently paying a property tax

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 22, 2018. RUR 1bn got written off Sverdlovsk Region’s residents’ overdue tax payment amounts between January 1 and October 19, 2018, head of Russia’s Federal Tax Service’s Sverdlovsk Region division’s Debt Settlement Department Artem Balyura said at a press conference in Yekaterinburg. The money written off pertains to unpaid transport tax, land tax, and property tax. The overall amount of unpaid taxes has gone down by RUR 2.5bn since the beginning of the year. According to Balyura, the amount in question got written off based on the Tax Amnesty Act 436-FZ (dated

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, October 19, 2018. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) is taking part in the 15th International ISCON 2018 Congress in Tula, MMK’s press service reports. The event got coordinated by Industrial Metallurgical Holding and the Steel-Smelters’ Association. This year, the congress agenda is dedicated to two special dates: firstly, National University of Science and Technology MISiS was founded one hundred years ago this year; and secondly, it was exactly 380 years ago that Russia’s metallurgical industry was born. The congress gets attended by metallurgical enterprises’

UrBC, Chelyabinsk, October 19, 2018. Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Boris Dubrovsky confirmed and approved of a revised ‘roadmap’ on dealing with private investors in housing co-operatives who did not get their homes built for them. Five problem apartment buildings have been taken off the list already. ‘The revised ‘roadmap’ is now available on Chelyabinsk Region Government’s website. Three apartment buildings developed by Greenflight and a building put up by OOO Rechelstroy and ChelSI each are no longer on the problem list,’ the Government’s Press Service & Information Department

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 19, 2018. There are now fewer head of cattle of all kinds at Sverdlovsk Region’s farms, Sverdlovskstat reports. The pig count, for example, dropped by 4.8% in the first nine months of the year compared with one year earlier and is down to 115,000 pigs; that of poultry decreased by 3.5% and is down to 13,700 chickens and ducks; that of sheep and goats declined by 4.9% and is down to 65,800 head of cattle; that of cows dropped by 1.5%, or by 1,700 head. Based on Sverdlovskstat’s statistical data, the decrease mostly has to do with agribusinesses’ shrinking counts.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 19, 2018. The per-square-meter price rose by 3.7% on Yekaterinburg existing home market since the start of the year, Ural Real Estate Chamber reports. ‘As of October 15, 2018, existing home price comes to RUR 69,762 per m2 on average. This is 0.8% more than four weeks previously. The average housing prices keep rising as the least expensive homes are no longer on offer in all the quality market segments,’ the Chamber explains. There are currently 7,925 apartments for sale in Yekaterinburg, which is 1% less than a month earlier, and 13.3% less than one year

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 19, 2018. Sverdlovsk Region-based banks issued 90.1% more credit cards in the third quarter of 2018 than in in the third quarter of 2017, National Credit History Bureau’s research findings indicate. In QIII’17, 50,328 credit cards got issued; one year later, the future is 95,693. In Russia on the whole, the number of newly issued credit cards rose by 61.8% between QIII’17 and QIII’18, that is, from 1.81m up to 2.94m.

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, October 18, 2018. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) now offers guided tours of the premises to the general public, with a few routes to choose from, the company press service reports. MMK has been hosting guided tours for visitors for a while now: over 4,000 people came to see the plant last year alone. Now there are special options for the younger visitors as well. Taming the Fire is a guided tour of Russia’s largest blast furnace department and the unique Mill 5000 that makes goods for large-diameter pipe manufacturers as well as for ship- and bridge-building

UrBC, Chelyabinsk, October 18, 2018. M.I. Glinka Chelyabinsk State Opera & Ballet Theater’s Children’s Singing School is going to stage an opera at the initiative of and with financial support from ChelPipe Group’s shareholders Andrei Komarov and Alexander Fedorov, the Group’s press service reports. The Cat's House by A.P. Kulagin/S.Ya. Marshak is a special treat for visitors to ChelPipe Group’s 16th Snezhnost Charity Festival in December 2018. All the parts will be performed by the children’s school’s students. The young performers are now rehearsing and going to choreography,

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 18, 2018. Federal Grid Company United Energy Systems bought a new, unique loading crane for its fleet of vehicles in Russia’s Polar North, FGC UES Western Siberia’s PR & Media Group reports. ‘Vityaz, the new special-purpose crane (freight capacity: 25,000 kg; boom length: 27 m), is unique to Russia’s electric power sector. The all-terrain crane will be used to repair electric mains in the Polar North territories, including the woods, the marshes, and the deep snow spots. Prior to this purchase, repairs used to require resorting to a helicopter or building a

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 18, 2018. Ural Airlines are offering their customers state-subsidized, reduced-price flights to and from Kaliningrad and cities in Russia’s Far East, the air carrier’s press service reports. The offer holds for the following flights: Moscow-Kaliningrad/Kaliningrad-Moscow (prices start from RUR 1,700) Saint Petersburg-Kaliningrad/Kaliningrad-Saint Petersburg (RUR 1,700) Chita-Yekaterinburg/Yekaterinburg-Chita (RUR 5,000) Chita-Moscow/Moscow-Chita (RUR 6,200) Blagoveshchensk-Moscow/Moscow-Blagoveshchensk (RUR 6,400) Blagoveshchensk-Saint Petersburg/Saint

UrBC, Chelyabinsk, October 18, 2018. Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Boris Dubrovsky ruled that six local towns should be given subsidies to work on reclamation of their respective landfills, Southern Urals Government’s Press Service & Information Department reports. The money will get allocated to Ozersk, Troitsk, Zlatoust, Verkhniy Ufaley, and Districts Kartalinsky and Argayashsky. There are currently 26 landfills located within urban living quarters in the Southern Urals all in all. ‘Russian President Vladimir Putin called for the development a master-planned waste disposal/recycling

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, October 17, 2018. MMK Group sold 3,052,000,000 kg of ready goods in the third quarter of 2018, which exceeded the figures for the previous quarter by 7.2%, the company’s website states. Among other things, the Group sold 1,351,000,000 kg of high value-added goods in QIII’18 (-2.1% against QII’18); HVA goods amounted to 44.3% of the company’s overall product range on offer. The Group’s member enterprise MMK-Ugol produced 808,000,000 kg of coal concentrate in the third quarter of the year (up 8.3% on the previous quarter). Between January and September 2018, MMK-Ugol

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 17, 2018. Ural Airlines will be operating Osh-Kazan-Osh flights starting October 28, 2018 and Osh-Krasnodar-Osh flights starting October 30, 2018, the air carrier’s press service reports. ‘Russia and Kyrgyzstan are long-term political and economic partners, so convenient air travel is crucial to people in both countries,’ the press service says. Osh-Kazan flights will be operated every Sunday, Kazan-Osh ones every Monday. Prices start from RUR 9,900 and RUR 9,600, respectively. Krasnodar-Osh-Krasnodar flights will be operated on Wednesdays/Tuesdays; prices start

UrBC, Chelyabinsk, October 17, 2018. The Russian Government is to decide on a contractor for Chelyabinsk Airport reconstruction, Southern Urals Government’s Press Service & Information Department refers to Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Boris Dubrovsky as stating. ‘Chelyabinsk will have to host the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS summits in 2020. It is important to make sure the airport infrastructure meets all the international standards and summit requirements. Glavekspertiza recently approved of the documentation relating to the first stage of the reconstruction process, so

UrBC, Chelyabinsk, October 17, 2018. Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Boris Dubrovsky coordinated a meeting with local town mayors, who reported on how Russian President Vladimir Putin’s provisions on the development of urban transit schemes by local authorities got complied with, Southern Urals Government’s Press Service & Information Department reports. The comprehensive urban transit scheme is the groundwork strategic plan that describes and systematizes the following transport infrastructure components: the number of bus/tram stops; the number of zebra crossings and underground