Tag: Mexico

Mexico’s postal service looks to monopoly as a solution to its financial woes

You can’t blame them for trying. The Mexican Postal Service (Sepomex) first began losing money in 1999, but by 2000, losses were reaching $200 million pesos a year, and $600 million pesos in 2001.

But now, the state-owned company is crying foul over what it calls “illegal competition” from well-known private foreign and domestic courier companies. The massive influx of competition has been further exasperated by the increasing popularity of email. In the face of its imminent demise Sepomex, the Transport and Communications Secretariat has sent a controversial reform proposal to the Chamber of Deputies that has private courier companies barking mad. The proposal would consolidate Sepomex’s position within the market and so assure its survival, that has companies like Multipack, DHL, Fedex and UPS barking mad.

The unfair competition of around 6,000 postal companies has hit Servicio Postal Mexicano (Sepomex – Mexican Postal Service) very hard as it has lost 40% of corporate clients and lost income of 500 million pesos (US$52.6 million) per year, reported Santiago Ontaón, director of operations.One of Sepomex’s competitors is Servicio Continental de Mensajera (SCM), which has managed to grab clients such as Bancomer, “the second most important client in the Mexican postal system,” said Ontaón. Bancomer alone has 6.5 million account holders.