Up to a quarter of Austria’s post offices faced with a high deficit

According to an assessment by the Austrian Post, 20 to 25 per cent of all post offices face a high deficit as they are frequented by too few customers, reports said on Saturday. As a consequence, up to 410 of Austria’s 1.640 post offices might be in danger of being closed down.

The Austrian Post said none of its employees would be dismissed. On the sidelines of an information meeting with the heads of 1.000 post offices, director general Anton Wais stressed there was no list of offices to be closed down. He did, however, not rule out that some of the branches might not be maintained.

The objective was to safeguard the future of the Austrian Post for the business location of Austria, said Wais. This was only possible if close attention was paid to what was “the optimum” for the company and the market.

A press release by the Austrian Post said its business area concerned with post offices had to reduce costs by 22.7 million euros by 2007 in order to be able to continue to maintain a comprehensive net of branches.

The “shift of the streams of customers” was not in accordance with the present distribution of post offices, said the press statement. A growing number of commuters frequented post offices close to their workplace and not the ones in their hometowns. The company had to offer its services where the customers needed them and “strengthen” the respective locations.

The press release went on to say reorganization measures should be finished by June 2005. Not a single location would be closed down without offering some kind of substitution.

President of the Economics Chamber Christoph Leitl of the governing People’s Party (VP) said on Saturday only 650 post offices were “profitable”. He suggested that more local shops than at present could take over tasks and services from post offices.

3.000 shops had already signalled interest in taking over from about 1.000 post offices, Leitl added.

Federal manager of the opposition Social Democrats (SP) Doris Bures called Leitl’s statement “adventurous”. Up to now, the People’s Party had denied that further post offices would be closed down. Now a high-ranking VP official claimed the shutdown of 1.000 of them. “That’s the last straw”, Bures said. (Schluss) fre