Mail volume & demand for postal services keep growing in Malaysia

CONTRARY to popular opinion, the volume of mail has not gone

down since the advent of the fax, e-mail and SMS.

Rather, Pos Malaysia is seeing a growth of between three and

five per cent every year.

According to Pos Malaysia CEO S.M. Haja Alawdin S. Md. Sulaiman, Pos Malaysia handles 1.12 billion items a year, accounting for 3.5 million items a day.

Of this 3.5 million, 70 per cent is mail from big companies,

either as business-to-business correspondence, or as

business-to-customer correspondence.

“These companies send all sorts of things-promotional brochures, company reports, bills, and reward gifts,” he says.

The remaining 30 per cent is mail from small businesses and

personal communication.

Sixty-five per cent of daily mail originates from the Klang

Valley.

Besides postal and courier services, Pos Malaysia also provides 127 counter services for 94 agencies, to facilitate, among others, water, electricity and telephone bill payments, renewal of driver’s licences, and posting of ballots.

Some of these services, however, are State-based, like Amanah Saham Sarawak, or seasonal, like the selling of F1 tickets.

“When the Government opened up telecommunications, people predicted that all these telcos would take business away from Pos Malaysia, but the opposite has proved true.

“When it was just Telekom Malaysia, we had 4.4 million items a year, but now that there are more telcos, there are also more customers, so the number of monthly statements going out is more. Telcos collectively now bring us six to seven million items a year.

“And when we send out the monthly statements, their customers come to Pos Malaysia counters to pay their bills,” chortles Haja.

For some reason, people still prefer paying their bills at a

counter, instead of making payments online.

And this, he feels, is not at all influenced by the nation’s

level of connectivity.

“If access to the Internet is what determines whether a postal service lives or dies, then the United States wouldn’t have a postal service at all. Yet, the country, home to the Silicon Valley, handles one billion items every two weeks,” he says.

As far as Haja is concerned, there is much room for expansion.
He feels that there is a market to be tapped in home shopping,

or even the sale of speciality foods, like in Japan.

“Our expertise lies in delivery, so we should focus on that.” Copyright 2003 NEW STRAITS TIMES-MANAGEMENT TIMES all rights reserved as distributed by WorldSources, Inc.