Brazil's lawmakers grill officials on postal service reforms
Government officials and postal service representatives met in Brasilia yesterday to answer questions from Brazil’s lawmakers on postal reform legislation that is set for a vote in Congress next week. Provisional Measure (MP) 532 would allow Brazil’s postal service, ECT, to modernise and expand its operations.
This would include new powers for ECT to set up subsidiaries, take ownership or part-ownership of other companies and establish operations abroad in order to compete with the large multinational logistics players.
Officials from the government’s Ministry of Communications and representatives from Correios and its employment associations were on hand at a public hearing of the Working Committee yesterday within the lower house of Brazil’s Congress, the Chamber of Deputies, to answer questions from lawmakers about the legislation.
During the hearing, ECT president Wagner Pinheiro de Oliveira said his company had to modernise because its postal business was vulnerable with traditional letter mail in various countries now losing ground to new forms of communication technology.
He said ECT had to operate outside of its traditional limits in the same way that foreign competitors can when operating in Brazil.
Yesterday’s hearing was attended by Secretary of the Postal Service Luciana Pontes along with the ECT president Wagner Pinheiro, board members of the company and union representatives
Pinheiro said: “The approval of the MP allows the transformation of the post office into a major integrated logistics company, which can provide quality services to all Brazilian citizens – the objective of the federal government.”
MP 532
Introduced into Brazil’s Congress in April, MP 532 includes various reforms for the biofuels industry, but also new powers to modernise the organisational structure of the state-owned postal service, ECT.
Its provisions would allow the postal service to set up subsidiaries and take control or ownership of existing businesses. ECT would be able to form business partnerships to improve the efficiency of its infrastructure and service network.
The law could also allow ECT more freedom to operate outside its traditional field of expertise, to explore new integrated logistics services and financial services, as well as new postal services and electronic services.
