PhilPost vs Padala
POSTMASTER General Ma. Josefina M. Dela Cruz hosted the World Mail and Express Asia Pacific conference October 19-21. The event, coincidentally one month before Manila hosts the summit of 21 APEC Leaders, was billed by organizers as the “APEC of global postal leaders.”
For the first time, PH played host to international CEOs, top executives of postal administrations, courier and logistics companies from around the globe, to look at the postal industry, specifically how e-commerce boom utilizes technology.
The two-day pow-wow was themed “Championing e-Commerce: Creating New Supply Chains.”
In this day and age of real-time Internet and instant coffee, PhilPost cannot depend on licking the back of postage stamps, or private carriers will take over business in its backyard. Instead of fearing modern technology as a threat, PhilPost welcomes and adapts to it as “reliable partner in improving its delivery efficiency.”
The cross-pollination at the conference discussed how postal administrators can grow and innovate by shifting their focus from being purely national or regional to the global market. It looked into the profitability of the courier industry. With an overwhelming e-commerce focus in Asia Pacific, postal operators turn to the medium, focusing on supply chain development — local, national, regional, and global.
BEST PRACTICES OF OLD. The conferees know that Japan and United Kingdom retain a monopoly on delivery of official passports (something perhaps that Postmaster Dela Cruz can take up with DFA Secretary Albert del Rosario). The Austrian Post has extensive banking operations, like many postal
PhilPost alone has saturated the entire archipelago with branch post offices, mostly in prime and central locations. (Florante Castillo is exploring how to optimize the real estate value of these offices, without losing their function.) Covetous eyes are cast on our Central Post Office with its Doric columns (the setting of the arrival of Prinsipe Amante).
In days of yore, D. I. Trese (the Pinoy counterpart of the flatfoot Dick Tracy) depended on the postman who delivers mail as his eyes and ears on who’s who and what’s about in the neighborhood. Today, Mamang Kartero’s annual burden of tons of Christmas cards is now passé after real-time Internet.
Why is mail delivered only on alternate days (M, W, F?); and why is money transfer business pocketed by private padala? PhilPost can perhaps ask previous management why it is losing territory to private courier services. (In his time, former Postmaster General Roilo Golez revived a Philippine Post On the Go.)
MILETONES & ANNIVERSARIES. While we welcome the new, we do not want to part with the old. Special milestones like UN and international events and Philippine bilateral relations with partner countries (France, Germany, Switzerland, Mexico, etc.) are celebrated with commemorative stamps. Universities and institutions come out with special issues. (BTW, our high school class probably has the singular distinction of coming out with a commemorative stamp on our 50th anniversary.) More than money can buy, philatelists treasure the exponential worth of their rare postage stamp collection.
While Internet can deliver on real time, it does not have the intimacy of the scent of her perfume… or enclose it within an envelope, sealed with a kiss. FEEDBACK: joseabetozaide@gmail.com