Bulgaria licenses first private postal services provider

Bulgaria has licensed domestic postal operator Tip Top Courier as the first private universal postal services provider, the country’s telecoms regulator, CRC, said on Monday.

“This market was worth 125 million levs (USD82 million/64 million euro) in 2005, which was a 24% annual increase. With the granting of a license to Tip Top Courier [the market] is entering the stage of competition,” CRC chairman Georgi Alexandrov told a news conference.

Tip Top Courier will launch universal postal services operations in January under the trademark T-Post. The company will invest some seven million levs in building its network by January 2009, Tip Top Courier executive officer Denka Dimitrova told the same news conference. Dimitrova said the investment will be financed through the company’s own funds and bank loans.

Bulgaria’s postal services market is likely to grow by another 24% this year, Alexandrov said. Postal services through couriers accounted for 60.8% of the total postal services market last year, according to data presented by Tip Top Courier chairman of the board of directors, Lachezar Kaparashev.

The country’s postal services market should be fully liberalised by the end of 2009, in line with the requirements of the European Union. Bulgaria will join the EU in January.

At the moment, the CRC is not reviewing applications by other companies to be licensed as universal postal services providers, Alexandrov said. Over 50 companies provide courier postal services in Bulgaria.

T-Post should have 48 post offices by the beginning of 2009, which should allow for some 53% of the country’s population to use the services it offers, Kaparashev said. By June 2012, T-Post should have post offices in all locations with population over 800 people and it should provide services to 6.760 million people, he said. Some 1,150 locations in the country of 7.7 million people have population of over 800 people.

Tip Top Courier expects to handle about one million parcels a day after its third year of operation of T-Post, up from some 50,000 parcels a day at the moment, Dimitrova said. The expected increase will be partly due to the scrapping of state monopoly of handling parcels with weight of up to 50 grammes, scheduled for the end of 2008, she said.

Tip Top Courier, which was set up in 1996, has been granted the licence for the period of 20 years.

(1 euro = 1.95583 Bulgarian levs)