Author: Archive

'Interim increase' pushes stamp up to 55c

Posted by | Feb 28, 2007 | |

The price of a stamp will rise by 7c tomorrow, and the bad news for consumers is that a further hike is also on the way.

A regular stamp is going up from 48c to 55c in what An Post dubbed an “interim increase” to be followed by another one in 2008. Tomorrow’s price hike was the first since 2003, and the company will seek another price rise next year to improve the quality of service, such as next-day delivery rates, a spokesperson said.

The regulator ComReg has ordered An Post to supply full accounting details of its services later this year and to review its prices based on that data.

ComReg said tomorrow’s price increases were less than the rate of inflation, as prices generally had increased by 11pc since the last stamp price increase in August 2003.

From tomorrow, letters up to 100g will be covered by the 55c rate – previously the standard charge only applied up to a limit of 50g, so the cost of posting an item between 50 and 100g will fall from 60c to 55c.

Discount

Business customers will receive a discount of 1c per item when they use meter franking machines or the permit system, making the cost of posting a standard letter 54c.

An Post said that they had been faced with significant cost increases since the last postal hike, as their wage bill alone had increased by 20m because of national partnership wage increases, while fuel costs had also soared.

The company is also facing the threat of having their most lucrative business cherrypicked away from them when postal services across Europe are liberalised in 2009.

The measures announced recently by EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy will be debated at a seminar in Dublin tomorrow – organised by postal trade unions, with Communications Minister Noel Dempsey highlighting the challenges this will bring.

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Emirates Post buys fleet for courier service

Posted by | Feb 28, 2007 | |

Emirates Post has commissioned two aircraft to begin an international courier service by mid-March, a top official said.

It is expanding into the air courier business and will begin operations next month, Abdullah Ebrahim Al Daboos, director-general of Emirates Post, told delegates at a logistics conference in Dubai yesterday.

The postal service, which is also planning an initial public offering, will procure a third plane in the next six months to complete its overall plan of a full fleet of planes in the next five years.

The director-general announced that it has assumed control of certain airport operations in the UAE but did not specify which airport the new courier service would fly from.

Air logistics is just one of three new companies Emirates Post plans to introduce in 2007.

Emirates Post plans to diversify its current remittances services by forming a “money management and movement” company slated for this year.

Emirates Post currently provides remittance services through its Wall Street Exchange Centre, but plans to open multiple offices in Asia and Europe with the new company to take advantage of the multi-billion dollar worldwide remittances industry. New offices are targeted for the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore, Al Daboos said.

Emirates Post will also create a national trucking service to complement its other ground delivery operations.

The government service is in the process of forming a parent company called Emirates Post Group to oversee its rapidly expanding family of subsidiaries.

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USPS talks about CASS/DPV

Posted by | Feb 28, 2007 | |

The U.S. Postal Service is doing a lot of outreach to get the word out that beginning on Aug. 1 mail pieces will receive CASS-related discounts only when the agency’s delivery point validation process confirms the primary number, or the first line, of the addresses.

CASS, or Coding Accuracy Support System, lets the USPS evaluate the accuracy of address-matching software in three areas: ZIP+4 delivery point coding, carrier route coding and five-digit coding.

The delivery point validation system aids mailers in getting accurate delivery

addresses and identifying erroneous addresses.

Currently an option, beginning with Cycle L of CASS-certified software, the USPS will assign a ZIP+4 code to a mail piece only if the mailer uses CASS-DPV to confirm that the input address has a valid primary number. The USPS said that under the new system, an average of 2 percent of the addresses from a mailing list could lose their automation discount, but that mailers with higher quality address lists will experience smaller drops in matching level.

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Good time to take Post Office private

Posted by | Feb 27, 2007 | |

Last week, the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s chief investigative body, removed the U.S. Postal Service from its list of “high-risk” government agencies. For the first time in recent memory, the Postal Service is back on solid financial ground.

The Postal Service has also taken the first step towards reform – a process which could ultimately lead to granting employees ownership of USPS through privatization.

Each year, the GAO lays out those agencies at risk of becoming unable to “economically, efficiently, and effectively perform their missions.” The Postal Service had been on the list for over five years. But it has recently had considerable success in reducing costs, repaying outstanding debts, and increasing productivity, all of which contributed to the GAO upgrade.

The most critical reason behind the Postal Service’s new financial outlook was a recent congressional law that set up a dedicated stream of cash to pay the USPS’s unfunded liabilities, which exceed USD80 billion. These debt obligations largely represent future healthcare costs for postal workers.

At the insistence of the Bush administration, the new law requires the Postal Service to use dedicated income, which has resulted from an over-calculation of USPS pension obligations, to pay its remaining liabilities responsibly.

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Magyar Posta shuts down further 66 post offices

Posted by | Feb 27, 2007 | |

Hungary’s state-owned postal company Magyar Posta will close a further 66 post offices in Budapest and other cities around the country on Thursday, spokeswoman Katalin Szasz told MTI on Tuesday. The closures will come just a few weeks after Magyar Posta shut down 38 post offices.

The closures are the second and last phase of a streamlining programme which is expected to save Magyar Posta more than HUF 500m a year, Magyar Posta spokesman CEO Tamas Tomecsko said earlier in February.

Mr Tomecsko said the post offices were closed in areas which had too much coverage compared to that stipulated under law. The law requires one post office for every community with more than 20,000 residents, he said, adding that the 169 post offices in Budapest are about twice the necessary number, considering this requirement.

The closures are part of an efficiency improvement programme started years earlier intended to prepare Magyar Posta for the full deregulation of the market in 2009.

Mr Tomecsko said Magyar Posta plans no further closures in the course of the year.

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Postal employees oppose privatisation move

Posted by | Feb 27, 2007 | |

Postal employees at the three-day biennial divisional conference of the National Federation of Postal Employees that was inaugurated in the city on Sunday vowed to oppose any attempt to privatise postal department.
They took out a rally in the city that concluded at their conference site shouting slogans against attempts to privatise postal sector in the name of reforms. This conference was inaugurated by vice president of CITU Janardan Pati.

The problem of Gramin Dak Sevaks was also major point of discussion at the open session of the conference. Employees demanded provision of proper status and pension to the GDS, who are lifeline of the postal network. The employees are also opposed to any attempt by the Government to reduce the staff strength and want all vacant posts to be filled as early as possible. It was a common opinion that the postal department should have monopoly over collection, conveyance and delivery of letters and mail as recommended by the parliamentary standing committee.

National leader of postal employees K.Raghavendra, who attended this conference, said political parties like Congress and BJP were not interested in solving the problems of postal employees. According to him postal employees were planning to hold national strike if the Government continues on the path of privatisation of postal sector.

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Publication costs will rise due to new postal rates

Posted by | Feb 27, 2007 | |

Magazines and other periodicals distributed via mail are facing higher costs and potentially thinner margins as a result of new postal rate increases, but the hike is not nearly as bad as some publisher industry executives might have feared. “As postal rate cases go, this has been a tough one, with even more varying points of view than in recent cases,” Gordon Hughes, president-CEO of American Business Media, said Monday in a statement released by the trade association following the Postal Regulatory Commission’s decision to boost rates as much as 18.3%.

“More analysis is necessary, but it appears that the efforts of our Washington counsel and our testifying members have prevented 20% and higher increases that would have resulted from the other proposals,” Hughes noted.

Based on the new rate structure, the price of a one-ounce, first-class rate will increase two cents to 41 cents vs. the 42 cents the postal service originally asked for. The commission granted an 11.7% increase for out-of-county periodicals, and approved an 18.3% increase for in-county periodicals. The postal service had sought a 24.4% increase for in-county periodicals.

The decision moves further in the direction of “cost-based rates” by recommending rates that take into account bundles, sacks and pallets, not just pieces and pounds.

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Government to muster CFA 56 billion arrears

Posted by | Feb 27, 2007 | |

The Minister of Economy and Finance says customers will be gradually reinstated.

The Cameroon Postal Service (CAMPOST) still owes its clients CFA 56 billion. The said sum was announced yesterday by the Minister of the Economy and Finance, Polycarpe Ahah Abah, at a press conference which followed the official handing over of the management of the parastatal to a Canadian technical entity, Tecsult International.

According to the terms of contract binding the government and Tecsult, the financial and postal departments of CAMPOST are expected to be effectively revamped within two years, giving priority to the payment of arrears owed clients and the rapid modernisation of the postal and affiliated services.

“It is an irreversible engagement to reorganise CAMPOST; the government has made the best choice by handing over the structure to an internationally reputable body. We expect Tecsult to put CAMPOST on the rail, taking into consideration the national reality”, Minister Abah Abah told the press. His declarations, however, generated a battery of questions from pressmen. The minister was asked what the government has done to reinstate the accounts of CAMPOST customers who have, for several years, had no access to their money, and why the government has decided to hand over the parastatal to a foreign entity after carrying out a nationwide campaign that brandished CAMPOST as a public trust. Minister Abah Abah said the government has already pumped in the sum of CFA 31 billion for the payment of arrears and many more strategies are being devised to reinforce the payment. He however said the arrears will be paid gradually, exacting no dates.

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