Anacom, the regulator tracking the performance of Portugal’s post offices, today announced 24 new service indicators for the privatised business, and aims to guarantee a "higher level of quality of the universal postal service" by 2020, through "more demanding goals.”
According to the regulator, "in addition to a quality standard for each service in terms of speed of delivery, a reliability goal has been established that should be fulfilled in 99.9% of cases."
"Among the changes is a new delivery speed for Correio Azul, registered mail, daily and weekly newspapers and periodicals" and the creation of an "indicator for bulk mail."
Thus, 99.9% of mail will have to be delivered within three days in the case of Correio Azul, or four days in the Autonomous Regions, and five days for normal mail.
As far as postal rates are concerned, these will change in 2019 and 2020, at which point "they should be updated based on the inflation minus 1.28%," says the regulator.
These mandatory performance targets are expected to come into force on July 1st this year and will run until the end of 2020. These targets are mandatory, until now any service failures have attracted fines.
The management of Correios de Portugal (CTT) today said it hoped that these new demands on its speed of service would, "not condition the viability or sustainability of the postal service.”
"CTT hopes that the solutions found will take into account the progressive digitisation of the economy, markets and society, and will be in line with European best practices and with the ongoing redefinition of the nature of mail," the company stated, pointing out that, "the volume of correspondence has steadily been declining since 2001, with around 50% fewer letters sent now than ten years ago."
"This very strong reduction is a consequence of email and has imposed a deep transformation on postal operators," stated the company, for once correct in its market analysis.
Nevertheless, the management guarantees that it will "serve its clients throughout the country with reliable, useful and accessible services.”
As for CTT’s restructuring plan presented in December 2017 in response to a collapse in share price, Anacom said that there are many cost saving initiatives, so the new speed of delivery rules will not result in increases in company costs.
