During the first quarter of 2006, ANACOM authorized 8 companies to start providing postal services in areas not reserved or covered by universal service. This takes the number of operators licensed to provide express mail services to 44. In non-express mail areas there are still six operators.
During the same quarter, traffic in the liberalized postal services, which makes up 23.4% of all traffic, reached a total of 77 million items. This represents an increase of 14.7% compared to the quarter before and 30% compared to the first quarter of 2005. These increases may be affected by the fact that more areas have been liberalized. In fact on 1st January a new phase of liberalization began, so that a range of items that had been part of reserved market are now counted as traffic in the liberalized market - there is now competition for postage with a price three times the reference tariff for items weighing over 50 grams.
Of all the items handled, 72 million were counted as national traffic, giving a quarterly increase of 16.5%, while outgoing international traffic totalled 5,4 million items - a quarterly rise of 5%.
CTT, the Portuguese Post Office, has a 96% share of national traffic, compared to 94.5% the quarter before, and a 92% share of outgoing international traffic, compared to 89.5% the quarter before. These figures have also been affected by the reduction in the scope of the reserved market.
Of the 77 million items handled in the liberalized postal market, 4 million were express mail items, representing 5% of the traffic open to competition, and 73 million were non-express mail items.
Non-express mail traffic grew by 16.7% during the quarter, whereas express mail traffic fell by 16.7%. This fall can in some part be attributed to companies of the CTT group in the distribution of national deliveries. The increase in distribution by CTT of nationally addressed items not considered express mail was the main reason for the overall quarterly growth in non-express mail traffic.
In the first quarter, CTT held a 46.4% share of express mail traffic, up 4.8% on the quarter before, while it had a 98.2% share of non-express mail traffic, compared to 97.9% in the previous quarter. This growth can also be put down to the reduction in the scope of the reserved area.
Consult:
- Postal services https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?categoryId=277884
