The world’s postal operators are increasing their volumes of express mail and goods, according tofigures released by the Universal Postal Union during its ongoing world congress in Geneva.
The 149 UPU national post offices within the organisation’s EMS Cooperative increased theirEMS volumes by 23% between 2004 and 2006, and 88% of items were delivered on time, the UPU said ina statement. EMS is a high quality, competitive, affordable international express postal servicefor sending documents and goods the world over, and in most countries EMS is the only operatoroffering universal access to international express services for private customers and small andmedium enterprises, it noted.
The EMS Cooperative was created in 1998 to develop and strengthen the EMS service. For 2007,13 countries received gold, silver or bronze awards for the excellence of their EMS services(deliveries, tracking of items and customer service) at the UPU EMS Cooperative meeting.Azerbaijan, Hong Kong (China), Japan, the Republic of Korea and Singapore took gold; the CzechRepublic, Great Britain, New Zealand, Sweden and the United States were awarded silver; andAustralia, Brazil and Canada received bronze awards. Hungary, Russia and Spain also received awardsfor exceptional customer service.
More than 2,200 postal sector stakeholders are participating in the 24th Universal PostalCongress, which is taking place in Geneva from July 22 until 12 August. The majority of the UPU’s191 member countries are represented.
Among the main developments so far, UPU member countries unanimously adopted a new four-yearroadmap for the worldwide postal sector. In addition to improving the interoperability, quality andefficiency of the world postal network, the strategy aims to stimulate a universal postal serviceadapted to the social, economic and technological environment; promote sustainable development ofthe postal sector and its economy; and foster the growth of the postal market(s) and services.
UPU Director General Edouard Dayan, who is expected to be re-elected to the post today, saidmember countries must firmly commit to modernizing their postal networks so that, globally, theycan fully contribute to their social and economic development objectives. Postal services are stillalive and well, he said, adding that e-mail and the Internet had not rung the death knell for them.On the contrary, he added, all means of communication complement each other, and the postal sectorin this era of the Internet and online commerce has never played a more key role in today’scommercial trade.
In another move, UPU members agreed on a new global monitoring system for the quality ofservice, which is expected to become operational in 2010. Member countries unanimously adopted aproposal to develop and implement a global monitoring system to evaluate the quality of service forincoming priority letter-post items and the quality of service link to terminal dues (whatcountries pay each other for processing each other’s incoming international mail). The system willalso be used to evaluate how successful postal operators are in improving their quality of servicethrough projects financed by the UPU’s Quality of Service Fund.
