TIRANA, Feb. 10 – State-run Posta Shqiptare (Albanian Post), the country’s biggest postal operator, says it posted $2.5 million in profits in 2014, overcoming its negative performance in 2013 when it registered losses.
Introducing an annual report, Majlind Lazimi, the director of the Albanian Post, stressed the necessity of modernizing the public operator’s services in order to increase its competitiveness in a market which is becoming more and more liberalized. “Part of this modernization is also the digitization of human resources managing systems, or different services offered in postal offices,” he said, also reconfirming the Post’s long-term ambition of becoming a Postbank.
The postal saving system, known as postbank, a project announced since 2010, will also serve to purchasing treasury bills, which are very important to get public funding, and increase competition in this market.
Many nations’ postal offices operate postal savings systems to provide depositors who don’t have access to banks a safe, a convenient method to save money and to promote saving among the poor.
The Albanian Post says its 2,230 workers will get a 10 percent pay rise and benefit from a bonus system starting April 2015.
Some 51 percent of the Albanian Post’s revenue in 2014 came from financial and banking services while the remaining part was a result of postal services.
Postal service operators reported a 5 percent decline in income for 2013 affected by a lower number of letter-post items. The public operator Posta Shqiptare (Albanian Post) which has a market share of around 67 percent and 10 other private operators reported a turnover of 2.7 billion lek (Euro 19 million) in 2013, down from 2.85 billion lek (Euro 20 million) in 2012, according to a report published by the Electronic and Postal Communications Authority.
Only three operator, the Albanian Post and two private ones, invested in 2013 a total of 4.6 million lek (Euro 325,000), down 66 percent compared to 2012.
Posta Shqiptare sh.a. offers a wide range of traditional postal services (letter post, postal parcels, and the service of money order), EMS express service, business services as well as financial services (fast money transfer, payment of taxes and duties, distribution of pensions, payment of telephone bills, electricity bills and other payments.)
