By Bright Ntramah
The Managing Director of Ghana Post, Bice Osei Kuffuor has called for a deliberate policy direction to support the State-Owned Courier service with Government business to enable it to generate enough revenue to fund its infrastructure. He said the organization’s plea for a sizable portion of government businesses would also enable Ghana Post to meet some of its recurrent expenditures such as payment of workers’ Social Security contributions, income tax to the Ghana Revenue Authority, as well as end-of-service benefits to its retired staff. Mr Kuffour who made the plea when the Governing Board of Ghana Post-paid a working visit to President Akufo-Addo at the Jubilee House said Ghana Post needs some core businesses in order to shore up its revenue to propel the organization’s growth.
To demonstrate the low nature of direct government business with Ghana Post, Mr Osei Kuffour noted, “the Kenya Postal service receives 45% of their revenue from government business.
In Lebanon, they receive 55% of their revenue from government business. In Japan, they receive 80% of the revenue from government business.
The Ghana Post MD said currently, only 3% of its monthly revenue comes from Government businesses, describing it as woefully inadequate.
In order to be profitable and become a dividend paying Organisation, Mr Kufuor said Ghana Post would need government’s support to implement its innovative business modules effectively. He said Ghana Post is repositioning itself to become a-one-stop-shop for all government institutions and several other businesses that offered their services electronically.
According to Mr Kufuor, Ghana Post intends to provide e-services such as the registration of passports, drivers licensing, the Ghana Card, and with its strategic positioning across the country, it could offer every Government service electronically at the post office.
President Akufo-Addo said he was not surprised about the changes that had taken place at Ghana Post and direction of the new administration. The President tasked the Minister of Communications and Digitisation, Ursula Owusu to take steps to enable the government to consider the request put forward by Ghana Post to handle a sizable portion of government business.
He said the ”arguments put forward by Ghana Post made a lot of practical sense such that if Government agencies could pay private sector operators for courier services why not the State owned if there is capacity to offer the same services”.
The Chairman of the Ghana Post Board, George Hayford said over the past 5 years, the leadership had put forward a turnaround strategy which had seen the introduction of new services, expanded their fleets, as well as leverage on digitalisation to introduce new and better services.
He said with the support of the Government, ”Ghana Post plans to establish a courier service hub in Accra to enable it to efficiently distribute mails and parcels to its clients as well as reduce its operational cost”.
