On Wednesday, December 21st, 2005, the National Regulatory Authority for Communications released the first Report on the statistical data regarding the market of postal services in 2004, elaborated based on the information transmitted by 134 postal service providers.
The conclusions of the report show that, during 1999-2004, the number of companies in the postal services market witnessed significant growth, from 5 providers in 1999, when the market was liberalised, to 118 by the end of 2003, respectively 138 by the end of 2004.
Among the 138 providers authorised in 2004, 107 actually operated in the market and processed 581,048,668 postal items, i.e. 26.77 postal items per capita, on average*.
The statistics prove that 118 providers (85% of the authorised providers) use exclusively their own network, 5 providers (4%) use both their own network and a third authorised company’s network, while 15 providers (11%) use exclusively a third company’s network.
The segment of postal services within the scope of Universal Service is covered by only one provider – the National Company “Posta Romana” S.A. (CNPR).
The segment of postal service outside the scope of Universal Service features vivid competition and a dynamic pace of service development and diversification. This trend is particularly rising in the sector of value-added services, especially in the Express service category: in 2004, 20 active providers in this segment processed a total traffic of 3,526,402 items.
In the segment of domestic Express postal services dealing with correspondence items, the following providers hold important market shares: S.C. Fan Courier Express S.R.L. (41.11%), S.C. Alo Curier Services S.R.L. (11.61%) and S.C. DHL International Romania S.R.L. (7.84%). In this segment, CNPR holds a lesser share of 1%.
In the segment of cross-border Express postal services dealing with correspondence items, two service providers prevailed: S.C. DHL International Romania S.R.L. and S.C. TNT Romania S.R.L. hold together 53.13% of the market, thus exceeding the market share of CNPR (34.09%).
The segment of value-added cross-border postal packages is very dynamic as regards the number of competitors and the market shares. Regarding the postal packages weighing up to 2 kg, the largest market share is held by TNT Romania (26.10%), followed by Trans Courier Service (12.59%) and DHL International Romania (9.20%). In the market of domestic postal packages weighing up to 2 kg, the Romanian Post holds the largest share, of 66.12%.
At the end of 2004, in the postal services sector worked 40,803 employees, that is 6.85% more than in 2003. The increase by 54.83% of the number of employees in the private postal field endorsed the rise of the total number of employees.
The report on the statistical data regarding the postal services in Romania during 2004 further detailing the market development is available here on the ANRC website.
Additional information
Value-added services – postal services whose characteristics meet specific requirements of the users, such as: delivery of a postal item directly to the addressee or to its authorised representative, delivery or guaranteed delivery at a certain time, multiple delivery attempts, delivery in the (priority) order specified by the sender, confirmed delivery by the sender, the possibility of changing the addressee during transit or, if the delivery to the initial destination fails, monitoring the postal item during transit and so on.
*According to the data published by the National Institute for Statistics, the population of Romania amounted to 21,711,252 inhabitants as of 01.01.2004.