Post office is worth a billion

The Ministry of Communications has calculated the cost of the reform

The Ministry of Communications and Informatization, which has already entered the reform stage, intends to attract investments worth about $1 billion. The money is intended to increase the profitability of mail (currently it is 4%) by modernizing the transport service and introducing information technologies for the implementation of such modern services as parcel trade, express mail delivery, money transfers, etc. In addition, the Ministry of Communications is even considering the possibility of creating its own postal aviation.

“We will attract external resources, including loans from Russian banks and primarily Sberbank, in providing state guarantees,” said First Deputy Minister of Communications Alexander Kiselev yesterday, “there are interested foreign investors, in particular, in the field of creating centers for sending printouts bills for payment of services of telecommunication operators.”

The ministry is currently preparing an amendment to the federal law “On Postal Services”, which will allow the creation of a joint-stock company on the basis of federal Russian postal enterprises. The concept for restructuring federal postal organizations, approved in June by the government, provides for the consolidation of assets within a single postal operator - initially in the form of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Russian Post, which will subsequently be corporatized into an open joint-stock company while maintaining 100 percent state control.

The postal restructuring plan is designed for three years. As part of the first stage, a national postal operator, FSUE Russian Post, has already been created. The second stage involves the introduction of new unregulated high-income services by MAP. Together with a Western consultant - McKinsey - the Ministry of Communications, the Ministry of Property and the Ministry of Economic Development are currently developing a concept for the development of the postal services market (its draft should be presented to the government in the first quarter of 2003).

At the final stage of restructuring, FSUE Russian Post should be transformed into an OJSC. On the recommendation of Western experts, after five years of full state control, the new company will be able to increase its capitalization in order to subsequently attract a strategic investor. “Then you can sell part of the shares of Russian Post, while retaining 51% of the shares from the state,” says Mr. Kiselev.

Valentina FEDOROVA