Vologda Region

Information source: the official portal of Region Administration, http://vologda-oblast.ru/

Industry

In the branch structure of industry, metallurgical engineering takes a dominating position. The Oblast takes the second place in Russia in terms of steelmaking and rolled metal production. Every sixth tonne of Russia's rolled metal is produced in the Vologda Oblast. The proportion of metal products make 55% in the total volume of the oblast's industrial production, chemical industry - 15.2%, food industry - 6.7%, machine building industry - 4.2%, forest and woodworking industry - 3.8%, light industry - 0.2%.

Climate

Seasons change each other and the Vologodians experience the so-called moderate-continental climate: a cold snowy winter followed by a short summer. During a year precipitation quantity makes 650-800 mm. In summer it makes 3/5s of this amount. The winter days are short, lasting only six hours or so. The coldest month in Vologda is January, with an average temperature ranging between -15 and -17C. The summer, although short, is one of Vologda’s most prized assets. It lasts about three months. People take an advantage of this special time by going to the country, festivals, side-walk cafes. The average temperature in July is between +23 and +25C. 

Transport

The Vologda territory is crossed by important ways connecting central Russia with the Urals and Siberia. The rivers flowing through the oblast’s territory carry their waters to the Baltic, White and Caspian seas.

Main factors providing investment attractiveness of the Vologda Oblast are as follows: 

• industrial potential characterized by highly-developed machine building and metalworking, chemical industry, light industry and timber industry;
• perfect natural conditions - water resources (numerous rivers and lakes), forests covering some 70% of the total land of the region and a number of perspective exploitations of minerals;
• presence of highly skilled scientific and technical potential;
• favorable geographical location and advanced network of communications - the oblast is one of the most important junctions of railways, automobile roads and airways in the North of Russia;
• stable political situation;
• implementation of a public finance reform programme and development of a sustainable fiscal policy that allowed accumulation of solid cash reserves safeguarding against the negative revenue shocks;
• availability of a developed legal basis of the State support of domestic and foreign investors, including issues of providing taxation and other privileges.

The law: 

• provides a wide range of forms of state financing of investment projects;
• grants privileges to the entities involved in investment activity;
• applies the principle of "non-deterioration of conditions for investors in case new acts of law are passed";
• provides dataware to would-be investors.