Tag: Mexico

Want to pay a bill in Mexico? Go to the bank, and pay it straight into your creditor’s bank account. Wish to send a letter across town? Call a messenger. Something for abroad? Use an international courier. As for the state-owned postal service, Sepomex, it evokes a laugh from most Mexicans. Gonzalo Alarcón, Sepomex’s head, says that “delivery times are acceptable”. He seems to be among the few who thinks so. “If you are trying to send a piece of mail from a small city to another small city, may God help you,” says Carlos Casasús, a former official at the transport ministry. Sepomex is less inefficient than it was. Its annual losses were equal to half its total revenues, but have fallen to 10% even though wages for postmen have doubled in the past five years. But Sepomex has only one automated mail sorting-machine, at Mexico City’s airport. Many of the 2m letters and parcels it delivers each day are conveyed by bicycle. It does not help that Sepomex has just 20,000 employees serving 103m people.

According to provisional data collected on their web site, SEPOMEX, the Mexican postal service, handled 732 million mail pieces in 2005 vs. 703 million in 2004 (+ 4%). Franked and permit mail items grew 5% from 627 to 660 million pieces.