Sustained economic growth in Latin America and governments’ obligation to get closer to their citizens are creating ideal conditions for strengthening the region’s postal sector, whose potential for stimulating socio-economic growth must be optimized, says UPU Director General Bishar A. Hussein.
Attending the annual meeting of the Postal Union of the Americas, Spain and Portugal’s (PUASP) executive council in Montevideo, Uruguay, a regional organization that works closely with the UPU, Hussein urged Latin American governments to pay attention to the postal sector, which has already suffered considerably over the past 30 years as a result of being excluded from national development policies and a lack of regulation.
“The postal sector in Latin America is fragmented,” said Hussein. “Postal reform must bring together the sector’s various stakeholders under a framework that guarantees a level-playing field in the market and enables this market to grow.”
According the UPU analyses, many partial or one-off reform efforts over the past few decades have severely hampered the postal sector’s development in Latin America, the modernization of the national Posts, and, ultimately, countries’ capacity to comply with their universal postal service obligations.
To rectify this situation, the UPU provides its member countries with a structured approach to postal reform that enables governments to reorganize the postal sector under an integrated and coherent framework. This approach looks at a country’s specific situation with an aim to strengthening the universal postal service, which must guarantee citizens’ access to communication thanks to the active participation of all relevant stakeholders.
From now until 2016, the UPU and the PUASP will invest more than one million dollars (USD) in projects designed to help reform and develop the postal sector as well as improve the quality of service in Latin America.
These priorities and others are part of the regional development plan developed by the UPU and the PUASP to help the region achieve the goals of the Doha Postal Strategy, the UPU’s global roadmap for 2013-2016.
Even if several national Posts from Latin America have made progress in recent years, their market share remains small in general. Only a handful hold more than a 50% market share, while the average is about 20%.
As physical mail volumes decline, the UPU and the PUASP feel Posts must position themselves for growth in small packets generated by the e-commerce boom. An efficient parcel service would constitute a useful platform on which to create other innovative services that contribute to national growth, similar to e-commerce and postal exports.
Another priority includes developing the electronic money-transfer service CorreoGiros, which relies on the UPU’s International Financial System. In 2012, Latin America received money transfers valued at 61.3 billion dollars from the United States, Spain and Japan. These transfers are critically important for Latin America in terms of micro and macro-economic growth, and Posts contribute to bringing down transfer fees by offering accessible and affordable services. The Posts of about 10 Latin American countries and Spain have been exchanging electronic money transfers through CorreoGiros since 2007.