The Russian government is set to unveil a major postal reform which could pave the way toprivatising Russian Post, scale back its postal monopoly and could ease legal restrictions on
private companies.A draft postal law is due to be finalised by September 15 and will be presented to the Duma, theRussian parliament, during the autumn session, Russian media reported, citing CommunicationsMinister, Nikolai Nikiforov.
According to Kommersant, a leading newspaper, the draft law removes the current legal ban onprivatising Russian Post by selling shares in the company. There has been repeated speculationabout the possible privatisation of Russian Post in recent years but this remains a controversialpolitical subject in Russia.
The bill suggests creating two types of postal companies in Russia: universal mail providers andcourier service companies. Integrators such as DHL and UPS would be counted into the lattercategory.
The draft bill only imposes restrictions on the universal postal service providers such as theobligation to provide a nationwide service across Russia at unified tariffs.
Courier companies would need to get licences to operate in one or several regions offering alltypes of postal services except for the delivery of regular mail correspondence. However, theirtariffs would no longer be regulated by the state and they would be able to set their own pricesfor their services.
The Communications Ministry confirmed the planned changes, adding that the law will onlystipulate the upper limit of postal tariffs with the operator having the right to reduce this ratein case of providing a large-scale service, subject to prior payment for future periods.
The ministry also commented that the requirement to privatise Russian Post was included in theorder of the Russian government from 2003 and a working group is due to report on this issue in thenear future. Its members tend to believe that Russian Post should remain a state enterprise but theFederal Finance Ministry has not given a clear statement on it yet, a spokesman said.
The possible creation of a postal bank based on Russian Post is not mentioned in the draft lawbut another working group is expected to work on the topic soon as well.
The ministry’s spokesman told Kommersant that the couriers are not expected to cause majorfinancial losses to Russian Post since the state company’s profits from express services are fairlysmall.
During a press conference last week, Nikiforov estimated the modernisation costs of Russian Postwithin the range of RUB 50-100 billion but rejected state financing. He said the CommunicationsMinistry had turned down the application for Russian Post to get RUB 10 billion compensation forproviding universal postal services. “We especially pay attention to the source of internalefficiency,” he was cited as saying.
The Russian Finance Ministry noted that the postal operator will receive funds from the budgetamounting to RUB 3.5 billion until 2016. After 2016, the costs of mail shipments will be consideredand a decision will be taken “depending on the situation,” the ministry’s spokesman said.
In response to the draft postal bill, Russian Post Deputy General Director Igor Mandrykin said: “ The document itself is simple and straightforward, it is generally well received. But there arealso certain concerns. If the universal postal service includes those services that do not belongto it such as shipping parcels and postal money transfers, Russian Post will have fewerpossibilities for cross-subsidisation of unprofitable services.”
Under a medium-term development strategy covering 2012-16 that was presented in April this year,Russian Post, which currently makes a small annual profit, is aiming to modernise its postaloperations, expand its parcels, express and financial services businesses and increase overallrevenues by 66% by 2020.
