THE POSTAL regulator is set to back down in its dispute with Consignia over the opening up of the postal market by slowing down the introduction of competition to the Royal Mail.
The move, due to be announced next month by Postcomm, follows a warning last week from Consignia that first and second-class stamp prices may have to rise by 3p a year if its monopoly is broken up too quickly.
The UK postal monopoly is about to disappear. Good riddance.
Everyone understands that customers benefit from competition. Competition drives price rivalry, efficiency and value for money, and causes operators to put new services on the market. However, many postal monopolists argue that outlawing competition is the only way to safeguard a nationwide (or “universal”) postal service. This is nonsense. There is not a shred of evidence that opening the postal markets to competition stops the provision of a basic nationwide postal service. Far from assuring a universal postal service: monopolies will kill the distribution industry.
Anybody for a change of name? The Post Office is now Consignia, so how about postal regulator Postcomm becoming the Deregulator? For that’s what we’re really doing — deregulating the postal market and allowing Consignia to compete in the real world.
Read MoreOn 14 March 2001 at a postal conference in Brussels, Deutsche Post, La Poste (France), NZ Post, Posten (Sweden) and other speakers gave bullish presentations. By contrast Jerry Cope, Consignia’s Group Managing Director, Strategy and Business Development, gave an emphatically downbeat view of the future of postal services. He warned that profit margins in the postal sector were not good. “The growth in the core profitable letter services is declining rapidly because of competition and regulation. At the same time the margins in the areas for diversification — parcels and logistics, and even e-commerce and banking — are dramatically lower than in the monopoly services?’
Read MoreThere’s been a lot said recently about Consignia’s problems but I wouldn’t have accepted the job of Chairman if I didnt believe it can have a successful future. Simply put, our objective is to be the best Post Office in the world. We’ve already made some crucial changes to put the business back on the road to profitability. There’s still a long way to go and we need to cut costs further, drive up our revenues and improve our product profitability. But our strategy will not just make us profitable again, but also improve services to our customers and make the company a better place for its dedicated employees to work in.
Read MoreNew Zealand Post must feel quite at home before Parliament’s finance and expenditure committee. The big State-owned enterprise is being accused of botching one of its overseas contracts — and that is something it is well used to.
For at least a year NZ Post has been kept busy defending its actions in South Africa. In response to a running series of charges that it messed up its operation there and tried to cover its tracks, the State-owned enterprise has had to duck and weave, barely maintaining its position.
A Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) panel discussing postal deregulation agreed at a meeting Wednesday to place lower priority on a bill allowing private firms to enter mail services and to focus on a bill for a new public entity to take over state-run postal services.
The move goes against Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, an advocate of privatization of postal services, who had been eyeing discussions to be held simultaneously on both bills for submission to the Diet by late April.
MailBoxes AB, a subsidiary of United Parcel Service (UPS), plans to open 60 post offices in Denmark this autumn, Borsen reports. The post offices will be run on a franchise basis and will have longer opening hours than Denmark’s state-owned postal service Post Danmark, the paper says
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