Infrastructure

173 credit institutions work on the territory of the Sverdlovsk Oblast today, these include banks with foreign capital: Raiffeisen Bank Austria, KMB-bank, Banque Societe Generale Vostok, the City Bank, Home Credit, the Credit Europe Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development - EBRD, International Moscow Bank, International Bank of Azerbaijan.
A stock and currency exchange, a network of audit companies, a branch of the American insurance company - AIG Life work here. Also there are representative offices of large consulting companies - KPMG and Ernst & Young.

Hotels

The hotel infrastructure in the Sverdlovsk Oblast is developing at the time of the expansion of international business relations.
Doors of 242 hotels are open to the guests of the region. Modern hotel projects are implemented today in accordance with international standards. The first Park Inn hotel opened in Ekaterinburg in 2005. The first half of 2009 will see the opening of a five star hotel Hayatt.

The key geographic location in the middle of the Urals Economic Area makes Ekaterinburg a regional retail and wholesale trade centre. Dozens of modern trade centres have been built in recent years.

The location of the Sverdlovsk Oblast creates unique conditions for the development of transport infrastructure and logistics. Economically sound overland and aviation Eurasian transport routes run through the territory with oil and gas regions of YaNAO and KhMAO being among the destinations.

A major international transport corridor - Central - links the Sverdlovsk oblast with West European countries and the regions of South-East Asia, provides access to Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and China, and in future it will open connections to the Korean Peninsula and Japan. The Trans-Siberian Railway (Transsib) is the main line of this corridor. Federal motorways join it from every direction: Ekaterinburg - Chelyabinsk (south), Ekaterinburg - Kurgan (south-east), Ekaterinburg - Tyumen (east), Ekaterinburg - Perm (west), Ekaterinburg - Serov (north).

A major investment project of the road construction industry is the development of the highway corridor Perm - Ivdel - Khanty-Mansiysk - Tomsk. This will give a momentum to the development of natural resources of the Subpolar and Polar Urals.

There are 8 airports working in the Sverdlovsk Oblast, 7 of which offer flights operated by local (internal) airlines. Flights to Ekaterinburg are serviced by the international airport Koltsovo (a hub), which is the centre of air transportation of the Urals Federal District. It offers scheduled and charter flight connections to 27 countries including countries of the European Union, Asia and the Middle East. As well as Russian airlines, Malev, Czech Airlines, Lufthansa, Austrian, FinnAir, and Turkish Airlines offer regular services from Ekaterinburg.

Ekaterinburg is a high capacity railway node used to ship cargo to other regions of the Urals, Siberia, and the Far East. It is one of the key transportation nodes for Russia as a whole.

There is the booming construction of warehouse complexes with developed infrastructure where racking equipment and warehouse machinery are focused on the customer logistics scheme.

The dynamic production growth and the penetration of the market by foreign and nationwide companies and international retail chains prompted the rapid growth in the warehousing real estate. 242,000 square metres of warehouse space was built just in 2008. The total area of warehouses in the Oblast amounts to 2.5 million square metres.
In Ekaterinburg there are 982,000 square metres of warehouse space, of which class A warehouses account for 163,000 square metres and class B and B+ - for 140,000 square metres.

Construction

The housing construction in the Sverdlovsk Oblast is developing rapidly. 1.7 million square metres of residential real estate was built in 2008.

Telecommunications

Cellular communications develop in the Sverdlovsk Oblast at a fast pace, it covers most cities and regional centres as well as major traffic arteries. By the beginning of 2008 the capacity of cellular networks was 5.5 million subscribers.
At present there are 6 provider companies offering cellular services on the territory of the Oblast.
The development level of Internet services and information resources puts Ekaterinburg amongst the leading Russian cities. There are more than 40 internet service providers working in the Oblast and over 180 Internet public access points.
The banking network implements electronic payment systems at a fast pace. New digital communication networks are built employing fibre-optic and radio-relay communication lines.
In 2007 the Sverdlovsk Oblast became one of the first regions in Russia which started digital television broadcasts.

Consumer market

In 2008 the retail sales amounted to 527 billion roubles which is 15% higher, in comparable prices, than in 2007.
Several large international outlet chains including IKEA, Auchan, Metro Cash & Carry, Obi, and others opened their stores on the territory of the Oblast.