Tag: Sepomex

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.

Carlos Rodarte sends postcards to himself from almost every place he travels. Such a hobby seems strange, except Rodarte is the head of regional operations for Mexican postal service Sepomex. He’s testing his own company’s efficiency–and trying to change the image of his long-neglected state-run employer. “What better proof,” he says, pulling dozens of postcards out of his desk. Rodarte and his colleagues have a lot to prove. The Mexican postal system handles 700 million letters a year, which sounds like a lot but adds up to just seven pieces per inhabitant. Comparisons make it clear that Mexico’s postal system is under-used by a skeptical public. Brazilians, for example, send out 8 billion mailings a year, which translates into 46 letters per inhabitant. Plus, Sepomex officials are also working in a statistics vacuum: It’s difficult to gauge to what degree Mexican mail volumes have deteriorated over the years since past administrations inflated numbers. Despite low volumes, Sepomex operates at a loss.