According to the terms envisaged in the community framework, and taking into account the European single market, the postal services market is undergoing a process of gradual and progressive liberalisation. As a result of this regulatory evolution, there has been increased competition in liberalised postal services, particularly in express mail services.
The prices for postal services in competition are set freely by the operators. Only the prices for the universal service operator are regulated.
The titles granted cover services provided at national and international level, supported to that end in own postal network and in the postal network conceded to the universal postal service provider.
The most significant global operators in the sector were active in Portugal in 2002, mainly in the area of international express mail.
The operator with most relative importance in the national market is naturally the universal service provider, CTT ? Correios de Portugal, whose attendance network at the end of 2002 was composed of 1,090 post offices (establishments per se), 2,775 postal stations and about 4,848 stamp sales points (establishments under an agency regime). In the same year, postal density was at 1 postal establishment per 2,693 inhabitants and geographic coverage was 1 postal establishment per 23.9 sq. km. Portugal remained one of the European countries with highest postal density, both per capita and in the number of establishments per square kilometre.
According to the CTT?s Development Plan for 2002, the post office network was used by about 400,000 customers (occasional and contractual) daily.
In order to profit most from installed capacity, the CTT has been pursuing a strategy of diversifying the scope of its attendance network?s activity in a number of ways: expanding the range of services provided outside the ambit of traditional postal services, through contracts with public administration bodies and others; installing postal internet (NetPost) kiosks at post offices; setting up citizen?s attendance posts (PACs) at post offices, in co-ordination with the Institute of Citizen?s Store Management (Instituto de Gestão das Lojas do Cidadão). Also, with the same objective, this operator began a process of reducing the number of post offices and stations.
Regarding prices, between 1992 and 2002 and in real terms the average price for normal mail dropped by 10.3 percent and the average price of priority mail dropped by 23.2 percent. In 2002 the values of the national and international base tariffs practiced in Portugal were less than the European Union average ? the prices for national normal mail (non-priority mail) were significantly less than the European averages (-31.9 percent), while those of national priority mail service were closer to the European average (-7.9 percent). In terms of international service, the prices of normal mail service were 1.0 percent lower than the EU average in the segment of correspondence addressed to the European Union, 6.1 percent less in the segment destined to ?other European countries? and 13.3 percent less in the segment destined to the ?rest of the world?.
Postal services witnessed satisfactory growth in terms of revenues, even though the economy was undergoing a general slowdown in this period, which particularly affected the volume of business generated by the private enterprise segment. The figures for average revenue per object also evolved favourably.
