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The Regions This Week
July 13, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 8
Eastern Europe
The Russian authorities are considering scal- ing their pension reforms back and reducing the hike to retirement ages, Reuters said citing un- named federal government sources. With a 90% disapproval rating, the long-overdue but hugely unpopular reform threatens to cause mass dis- content and country-wide protests.
Russia will initiate consultations with the World Trade Organisation in a dispute over steel and aluminium import duties imposed by the US, the organisation said. The damage to Russia is esti- mated at roughly $0.5bn.
Belarus and Turkey intend to raise their bilater- al trade to $1bn by the end of the year, according to the chairman of the Council of the Republic of the National Assembly of Belarus Mikhail Myas- nikovich, who met with Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim in Ankara.
Russian special services detained seven mer- chant ships in the Sea of Azov, and four more a few days earlier, which were headed to or depart- ing from Ukraine's cities of Mariupol and Berdi- ansk. According to the 2003 agreement signed between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s then-president Leonid Kuchma, both countries can use the Azov Sea freely.
Two German shipping companies — Hansa Heavy Lift from Hamburg and Heinz Corleis KG from Stade (Lower Saxony) — are suspected of busting EU sanctions by illegal supplying raw materials to Ukraine's Crimea which was occupied by Rus- sia in 2014.
For the first time since November 2017 Russia's largest banks increased the interest rates on retail deposits, with the average maximum rate increasing to 6.45% in June 2018 from 6.05%, ac- cording to data from the Central Bank of Russia.
Ukraine's state-owned natural gas monopoly Naftogaz filed an $11bn new claim against Rus- sia's natural gas giant Gazprom with the Stock- holm arbitration, demanding the review of tariffs on gas transit.
Private companies in Moscow and St Petersburg stopped increasing salaries in the first half of 2018, according to the recruiting company Head- Hunter, as cited by RBC. In Moscow incomes
of employees in the first half of 2018 did not change compared to the same period last year. In St Petersburg and the Leningrad region, they fell by 2%.
Higher oil prices, the new fiscal rule and the World Cup all gave Russia a $22.3bn currency account surplus in the second quarter of this year, the Central Bank of Russia reported. This puts Russia on course for its biggest surplus in seven years.
Inflation in Belarus stood at 0.4% m/m in June (vs 0.3% m/m deflation in May), and 2.9% y/y (vs 2.5% y/y inflation in May), according to the nation- al statistics agency Belstat.
The Russian government plans to borrow $7bn on the international capital markets in 2017 including a $4bn swap of old bonds, First Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Anton Silu- anov said.
Russia’s only aluminium producer UC Rusal that was hit by US sanctions in April saw exports soar 59.1% in May to 420,000 tonnes, according to the Federal Customs Service (FCS), reports Vedo- mosti. In monetary terms, exports increased by 56.6% to $751.6mn. As compared to March 2018, shipments increased by 24.8% in physical terms and by 17.3% in monetary terms.