Mikhail Mishustin: “The postal service’s connecting role remains in high demand with the public and businesses, particularly in the far-flung areas, including the recipients of pensions, allowances, and other social benefits.”
Mikhail Mishustin’s opening remarks:
Good afternoon, colleagues,
Today, we will review the updated Strategy for Advancing Russian Post Operations to 2030. This state company operates through Russia’s most ramified network of branches delivering mail both domestically and internationally.
The postal service’s connecting role remains in high demand with the public and businesses, particularly in the far-flung areas, including the recipients of pensions, allowances, and other social benefits. This also includes free delivery of packages to our military personnel involved in the special military operation, ensuring that every defender can sense the care and attention of their relatives, friends, and countless concerned citizens. Over half a million parcels have been sent to the special military operation zone to date.
The President prioritises the advancement of postal services in the country. In recent years, the Government has made substantial progress. Since 2021, Russian Post’s authorised capital has been up by 16.5 billion roubles as part of the modernisation programme. The funds were used to renovate more than 3,000 post offices in rural and far-flung areas. At the President’s instruction, this work will continue.
In addition to the above support measures, last year Russian Post was granted exclusive rights to deliver pensions in cash.
Notably, Russia is a country with highly developed digital technologies and strong competition in the transport, connectivity, and logistics sectors. Today, most of Russian Post’s revenue comes from relatively new areas such as delivering online purchases, including international ones, providing financial services, and engaging in retail trade at its branches.
This revenue can be used to fund social responsibilities laid out in the law on postal services, such as maintaining ramified infrastructure and offering a broad variety of essential services with state-regulated tariffs, which calls for significant investment.
The renovation of post offices and the implementation of digital services should lead to high levels of customer satisfaction, with one key metric being the speed of mail delivery.
Colleagues,
We need to carefully assess the interim results of Russian Post’s modernisation, evaluate the effectiveness of management decisions, including retail operations and property management, and consider proposals for advancing the company’s operations in the future. We have many issues to address, such as issuing online-ordered medications in rural and remote areas. That also includes subsidies for delivering print publications of particular social importance.
It goes without saying that we must continue to improve digital postal services. It’s critical to keep all services accessible nationwide without requiring users to have special skills or equipment to use them.
With that in mind, we will proceed to discuss the most promising areas of focus to be included in the revised corporate strategy.
Let’s get down to work.