During the final quarter of 2006, around 77 million objects were handled by postal services operated in competition, 24% of total postal traffic. This number of objects represents a rise of 6.9% compared to the previous quarter and 14.5% year-on-year. While available information points to this rise being boosted by seasonal factors, the figures should be treated with caution, in view of the fact that they have also been impacted by the narrowing of the reserved area.
During the quarter, the volume of national postal traffic exceeded 70 million objects, while outgoing international traffic exceeded 6.4 million objects. National traffic makes up 92% of total postal traffic operated in competition, with outgoing international traffic representing 8%.
National traffic grew by 6.7% over the quarter, while international traffic grew by 9%.
Within the liberalized area, Grupo CTT was responsible for around 95% of national traffic and for about 89% of outgoing international traffic.
In the same period, about 5 million of the total 77 million liberalized postal objects fell within the express mail category, while more than 72 million were encompassed by the remaining service categories. Express mail therefore accounted for 6% of the total traffic operated in competition, with the remaining categories making up 94% of the total.
In this quarter, the traffic of services covered by the express mail category grew by 29.7%, while services outside the express mail category grew by 5.7%.
An increase in the national traffic of packages was the main driving force behind the growth in express mail services seen this quarter. In the case of non-express mail services, the main factor behind the quarterly rise in traffic was the distribution of books, newspapers, catalogues and other periodicals by the companies of Grupo CTT.
Compared to the same period of 2005, express mail traffic saw an increase of around 6.5%, while non-express mail traffic saw an increase of 15%.
Regarding the competitive positions of the providers, it can be seen that as at the end of 4Q06 the companies of Grupo CTT held a 42.6% share of express mail traffic (up 3.1% on the previous quarter) and a 97.8% share of non-express mail traffic
The postal items per capita index stood at 0.7 postal objects distributed per inhabitant, in line with the figure of the previous quarter.
In December there were 16,769 people working in liberalised postal services, 901 less than in the previous quarter. The drop seen in this quarter is directly due to the companies of Grupo CTT, which normally take on large numbers of temporary employees during the second and third quarters, the holiday period of their permanent workers.
Consult:
- Postal services https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?categoryId=277884
