UPU News:-Latin America: postal reform and quality of service targeted as priorities

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, Hussein reminded Latin American governments to pay attention to the postal sector, which has suffered considerably over the past 30 years as a result of being excluded from national development policies and a lack of regulation.

“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,” he said.

According to 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 tackle this challenge, 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 and strengthen the universal postal service for the benefit of all citizens.

Investments

Over the next three years, 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.

As physical mail volumes decline, 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.