Finance minister suggests corporatizing Russian mail service
Russia’s Finance Minister Thursday suggested that the country’s state-owned postal monopoly should be corporatized.
“Attracting private investors… will make it possible to modernize Russia’s postal services thanks to billions of dollars in private investment,” Alexei Kudrin told a Cabinet meeting.
First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev welcomed the idea, saying: “Obviously, the mail [network] is an infrastructure and monopolistic area, and in desperate need of investment.”
But Medvedev called for extreme caution in making the shift, given the vital social role of postal services in communities throughout Russia.
Igor Syrtsov, the company’s chief executive, said last Friday that it would incur losses of $36 million in 2006.
It reported a 73% year-on-year drop in net profits in 2005, down to $8.5 million. Syrtsov said it was due to a doubling of staff wages, which are still 40% below the nation’s public-sector average, and to an almost five-fold increase in development and modernization spending.
