Royal Mail will come under pressure to abandon its privileged position on VAT when the new postal regulator makes his first public comments.
Nigel Stapleton, who took over as the head of Postcomm last month, will tell a postal conference in Amsterdam that there must be a level playing field for all companies wanting to trade in postal services and that Royal Mail’s exemption from charging VAT is unfair.
Read MoreRoyal Mail has branched out into electrical repairs at its Swindon warehouse in order to cash in on a new but potentially lucrative market in goods returned by shoppers.
Retailers could be recouping up to GBP 5.52 billion a year from such goods, according to a report commissioned by Royal Mail. The problem will worsen when new legislation next year forces retailers and manufacturers to take back unwanted electrical goods.
Read MoreAlmost immediately after leaving Alitalia, Francesco Mengozzi has joined the Italian Post Office as co-director general, working in the areas of Finance and Post Office banking services. He is arriving at a difficult time for the Post Office, as there is a presumed EUR104m black hole in its accounts, discovered by auditing company PriceWaterhouse.
Read MoreU-Turn for German government over Maut
Read MoreUnited Parcel Service (UPS) plans to promote Thailand as its gateway to Indochina and other Asian countries because of its geography and good infrastructure, its Asia-Pacific head Ken Torok said yesterday.
Just how fast Thailand attains this position will depend on the readiness of its facilities such as those at the new Suvarnabhumi International Airport.
The seven opportunity Asian countries for UPS are China, Japan, Korea, India, Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand, he said. Last year the number of packages sent by UPS to Asia grew by an average of 15 per cent from the previous year.
In the global market, excluding Asia, business grew by 50 per cent.
Delivery times
For years, Swiss Post has been one of the top postal organizations with the best delivery times for letters, parcels and international mail. The 2003 figures confirm this once again. The survey is conducted annually by independent institutes. Last year, 98 of 100 letters mailed reached their recipients on time (A Mail: 97.9percent, B Mail 98.2percent). The figures for parcels are similarly high (PostPac Priority: 97.3percent, PostPac Economy: 97.8percent). Swiss Post is also one of the leaders in cross-border mail: a Priority letter takes an average of 2.1 days to reach its destination in Europe (Switzerland and other European countries).
Read MoreChina will speed up its efforts to reform the postal service and railway sectors this year as it continues to revamp the telecommunications, electricity and civil aviation industries, Premier Wen Jiabao said.
Read MoreA countrywide postal strike has moved closer as a result of an overwhelming vote by workers at An Post to pursue industrial action. Members of the Communications Workers Union (CWU) have voted 83pc in favour of such action in a bid to secure pay rises. The union is refusing to accept a claim by management that it cannot afford to pay the 3pc wage rise due under the national pay deal.
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