A review meeting of the entire Indian postal sector, chaired by Minister of Communications and IT Kapil Sibal, has found it lagging behind its peers in other parts of the world and called for immediate reforms.
Sibal was displeased with the unorganised nature of Indian postal sector in general, its low contribution to GDP and under-utilised potential to generate employment. According to ministry sources, Sibal on the basis of cross country data presented to him remarked that "Indian Postal Sector is unorganised and grossly undeveloped. In absence of a forward looking policy framework, the Postal Sector in India has failed to keep with global development".
The meeting was held in connection with finalisation of the draft cabinet note for the first detailed National Postal Policy. The data presented in the meeting suggested that global postal services is likely to reach USD 331 billion by 201.
This, however, did not incorporate the current status or contribution of Indian postal sector due to non-availability of authentic data. The officials told Sibal that postal sector in some European countries' contributed between 0.6-0.9 per cent to their GDP but the contribution of estimated Rs 15,000 crore Indian Postal sector is much lower.
In terms of employment generation, postal sector of France accounts for 1 per cent of total employment.
As many as 27 postal service providers in European Union account for 0.5 per cent of the region's total employment whereas it stood at around 0.6 million people out of 1.2 billion population in India.
"Postal sector urgently requires legislative, institutional and governance reforms," Sibal said. He also asked the postal department to make provision for uniform quality standards of services and grievance redressal mechanism at par with global best practices in the policy.