Tag: Asia

Sri Lanka Postal Department introduces a business mail service

Posted by | Apr 28, 2007 | |

The Sri Lanka Postal Department introduced a business postal service with the increase of postal charges yesterday.

The postage for all business letters under 30 grams is Rs. 15, while the personal postage remains unchanged at Rs. 5. All letters with return addresses of businesses and post boxes, windowed envelopes and envelopes with advertisements will be identified as business letters. All bulk mail will also be considered business letters.

The Postal Department will provide a concession of Rs. 8 for normal mail. It expects to provide a value added service to the business mail. The Postal Department has increased all postages except the normal mail.

Meanwhile, the General Secretary of the Postal and Telecommunication Officers’ Union K.N. Weerasekara said that his union protests the postage amendment. He said that due to the high business postage, people will avoid mail.

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Singapore Post profit up 25 pct on property income

Posted by | Apr 27, 2007 | |

Singapore Post , the country’s main mail group, on Friday reported a 25 percent rise in quarterly profit, due to higher rental and property-related income and said this year’s focus would be on regional growth.
The Singapore postal group said in a statement it earned a net profit of S$38.6 million ($25.5 million) in its fiscal fourth quarter ended March 31, compared to S$30.9 million in the previous year.

Rental and property-related income rose 15.5 percent to S$5.2 million, due to higher rental rates and yield enhancements.

Full-year net profit rose 13.3 percent to S$139.8 million, beating a consensus forecast of about S$136.1 million from eight analysts polled by Reuters Estimates.

Quarterly revenue rose 7.3 percent to S$112.6 million as a result of higher sales in its three divisions — mail, logistics and retail.

SingPost has also proposed a final dividend of of 2.5 Singapore cents per share. Together with the interim dividends of 1.25 cents per share paid in each of the first three quarters of fiscal 2006/07, the total annual dividend amounts to 6.25 cents.

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China Postal Group plans to set up insurance company

Posted by | Apr 25, 2007 | |

China Postal Group (CPG) plans to set up an insurance company which will be the country’s first insurer with sole investment from the postal sector, Wu Dingfu, chairman of China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC), said yesterday.
Wu said the commission is currently dealing with the application submitted by the CPG for establishing an insurance company.

The company would be set up by the CPG and its plentiful subsidiaries across the country, and would provide insurance services involving relatively small amount of money as some Japanese insurers do, according to Wu.

About 20,000 insurance companies operating in Japan are mainly engaged in one-year life and medicare insurance and two-year property insurance, which usually set an upper limit to the compensation amount.

China’s postal sector, boasting 36,000 outlets nationwide, simply serves as the sales agent of insurance products for the moment, but was urged to explore further cooperation with the insurance sector.

Statistics show that nearly 14 percent of the country’s insurance agents came from the postal sector by the end of March.

The CPG has earlier made a step toward the financial reform in establishing the China Postal Savings Bank with total registered capital of 20 billion yuan (USD2.6 billion), which becomes the country’s fifth largest bank.

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Net profit estimate lowered for Japan Post group after privatization

Posted by | Apr 25, 2007 | |

A faster-than-expected drop in postal savings has prompted Japan Post Corp to lower a net profit estimate to 508 billion yen for its group in fiscal 2008 after the postal system’s privatization this October, informed sources said Wednesday.

For fiscal 2011, which ends in March 2012, the net profit is estimated at 587 billion yen for the group that will consist of Yucho (postal savings) Bank, Kampo Life Insurance Co, a mail service company, a post office over-the-counter services firm and their holding company. The number of employees the group will take on from the postal system as of the privatization is estimated at 241,400, down some 10,000 from the previous estimate given in July 2006, as some 10,000 workers voluntarily left the system at the end of March.

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The bill with wrong address

Posted by | Apr 24, 2007 | |

One wonders why the India Post Amendment Bill has been mooted. It is just not worth the effort. And it doesn’t matter if the bill gives monopoly rights to the government carrier in a certain weight category, or if it forces private courier companies to charge many times more than India Post. In the first place, this is simply a restrictive trade practice. From a business perspective India Post is simply picking a lemon.

Consider their argument for seeking a monopoly right to carry letters and documents that weigh less than 150 grammes. DoP believes that it alone services the universal service obligation (USO) because it has thousands of branch offices in the rural areas where there are no courier services. It loses Rs 700 crore annually to run these branch offices. In doing so, DoP incurs extensive losses on almost every product that it delivers. So why is it hankering to do more of the loss-making business? If DoP actually gets to implement what it is looking at then its losses will compound.

The situation might actually be worse. This segment has been growing at a slower pace when compared with the express parcels and logistics segment. According to the latest survey conducted by the universal postal union (UPU), almost two thirds of public operators across the globe are anticipating a drop in the proportion of income generated by the letter post, with the proportion of income generated by parcels & logistics and to a lesser extent by postal financial services set to increase accordingly. Compared to express parcels and logistics, projected to grow at almost 25% over the next three years, the letters and post segment is projected to grow at only 8% to 10%. It is intriguing, then, why India Post still wants to create a strong foothold in this segment while its cousins abroad—Deutsche Post and US Postal Service—are focussing largely on parcels & logistics services.

DoP has cited international examples to strengthen its case for retaining exclusive privilege. While most countries allow the official postal department to reserve certain segments of the postal business, the international trend is toward opening up the postal sector. The European Union has made it mandatory for its members to open up the postal sector by 2009. Japan also plans to completely privatise Japan Post, a state-owned entity, by 2007.

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