The Managing Director of GhanaPost, Bice Osei Kuffuor, has called for a deliberate policy direction to support the State-Owned Courier organisation with government business to enable it to generate enough revenue to fund its infrastructure.
Mr Kuffuor said that would also enable GhanaPost to meet some of its recurrent expenditures–payment of workers’ Social Security contributions, income tax to the Ghana Revenue Authority, as well as end-of-service benefits to its retired staff.
He said GhanaPost which was going through some institutional changes needed some core businesses such as Government businesses to shore up its revenue to propel the organisation’s growth.
Mr Kufour made the plea when the Governing Board of GhanaPost paid a working visit to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo at the Jubilee House on Thursday.
The GhanaPost MD said currently, only three per cent of its monthly revenue came from government businesses, describing it as woefully inadequate.
However, in Kenya, he indicated that that country’s Post office received 45 per cent of its revenue from government businesses, whereas in Lebanon and Japan, government businesses formed 55 per cent and 85 per cent respectively of their total revenues.
The current leadership, according to the Managing Director, was poised to grow GhanaPost to become a dividend-paying organisation for the government which the corporation had not been able to do over the last 30 years.
In addition to its challenges, he said GhanaPost has 330 active post offices out of 360 across the country but only 94 were profit-driven.
To be profitable and become a dividend-paying Organisation, Mr Kufuor said GhanaPost would need the government’s support to implement its innovative business modules.
He said the company was repositioning itself to become a-one-stop-shop for all government institutions and other businesses that offered their services electronically.
Currently, GhanaPost offers Courier services, e-commerce, a digital addressing system, agency banking, warehousing and haulage services.
According to Mr Kufuor, the organisation intends to provide e-services such as the registration of passports, driver licensing, the Ghana Card, and all government services offered electronically.
The Chairman of the GhanaPost Board, Mr George Hayford, said over the past five years, the leadership had put forward a turnaround strategy which had seen the introduction of new services, expanded their fleets, as well as leveraged digitalisation to introduce new and better services.
Mr Hayford said GhanaPost plans to operate its cargo services as it currently pays about USD250,000 a month to service its international and local obligations to international and local Courier companies in the distribution of mails and parcels to its clients.
President Akufo-Addo said he was not surprised about the changes that had taken place at GhanaPost, vis-à-vis the trajectory of the ambitious vision and direction of the new administration.
The President tasked the Minister for Communications and Digitisation, Ursula Owusu to consider the request put forward by GhanaPost to handle a sizable portion of government business.
He said the arguments put forward by GhanaPost 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 was the capacity to offer the same services.