adminKudakwashe Mhundwa Business Reporter
The Posts and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (Potraz) says it is working on measures to resuscitate the country’s struggling postal services sector.
This comes as the sector recorded an 8,5 percent decline in revenue inflows for the third quarter of 2018 to $8 268 603 from $9 033 823 during the second quarter of the year.
Potraz director general Dr Gift Machengete said while presenting the postal and telecommunications services sector third quarter performance report that there had been a decline in revenue generating streams of the postal services sector.
However, the regulator said it is in the process of crafting a business model that is in line with international practices of e-commerce as a way of reviving the sector’s performance.
“The reasons are that people are no longer writing letters as they are communicating using other means. The postal service was a letter transporting entity now because letter writing has gone down the activities for postal are going down. However, there are other things that a postal organisation can do. Other countries that have done fantastically well when it comes to the postal industry for example Hungary and Malaysia. In Malaysia for example, when their postal service was going down, the government of Malaysia said you are on your own its either you sink or you swim, government is not going to give you anything. You have to come up with strategies which will take you forward and they have completely turned around the postal service.
“They have gone into e-commerce and e-business. They have let the traditional postal services go down. They are no longer involved in the letter business but what they are now involved in is e-commerce. Everywhere the e-commerce business is on the increase and with that they have managed to buy two cargo plans which they are using to transport packages. In terms of e-commerce they now have big cargo ships. They have completely turned around the postal service within the Malaysian industries.
“We have gone there ourselves and we saw that this is what we introduced here. We are starting with a model post office. Chitungwiza plans have already been done and in fact they are at the tail end of drawings,” said Dr Machengete.
She also said the regulator has made budgetary provisions of about $500 000 for the setting up of a model post office.
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