Ural Federal District - General Information and Statistics

General Information and Statistics

The district covers an area of 1,788,900 square kilometers (690,700 sq mi). That is about 10% of Russia. According to the 2010 Census, the ccountry had a population of 12,082,700. Of those, 82.74% were Russians (10,237,992 people), 5.14% Tatars (636,454), 2.87% Ukrainians (355,087) and 2.15% Bashkirs (265,586). The remainder is comprised by various nationalities of the former Soviet Union. Urban population constituted 79.6%. It was mostly concentrated in Yekaterinburg (1,293,537), Chelyabinsk (1,077,174), Tyumen (510,719), Magnitogorsk (418,545), Nizhny Tagil (390,498), Kurgan (345,515) and Surgut (285,027).

In 2006, the district was providing 90% of Russian natural gas production, 68% of oil and 42% of metal products. Industrial production per capita in the district is about 2.5 higher than the average value throughout Russia. The district provides about 42% of Russian tax incomes, and most of these are due to the industry. Its major branches are fuel mining and production (53%), metallurgy (24%) and metal processing and engineering (8.8%). The latter two are especially developed in Chelyabinsk and Sverdlovsk Oblast, making up 83% and 73% of the overall Russian industry, respectively. Whereas fuel and mineral mining has been providing a nearly constant outcome between 1990 and 2006, metal processing and engineering are declining, despite the fact that they employ up to 30% of industry workers of the district. The production of metal-cutting machines, excavators, tractors, bulldozers, buses and steel-making equipment decreased 6–34 times, and manufacturing of household appliances and agricultural equipment almost halted. The fraction of machinery in total industrial products decreased from 20% in 1990 to 2.5% in 2006. The machinery required for other industries in the Ural is mostly imported, at a volume of $1.7 billion per year. More than a third of the machinery plants are unprofitable. Among the causes of the decline are a lack of local resources and increasing transport prices. Local ore processing plants can provide only 20% of required copper, 28% chromium, 35% iron and 17% coal, and many of these resources are nearly exhausted. Meanwhile, the average distance to import them to the Ural is 2,500 km.

The district is governed by the Presidential Envoy, and individual envoys are assigned by the President of Russia to all the Oblasts of the district. Pyotr Latyshev had been the envoy to the Urals Federal District until his death on December 2, 2008. Nikolay Vinnichenko succeeded him on this post on December 8, 2008. On September 6, 2011 Vinnichenko was appointed the envoy to the Northwestern Federal District, and Yevgeny Kuyvashev became the Presidential Envoy in the Urals Federal District. On May 18, 2012 Vladimir Putin offered the tenure to Igor Kholmanskikh, an engineer without any previous political experience, and Kholmanskikh accepted the offer.