Posta registered a massive 58% decline in traffic between April and June of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the latest Sector Statistics report by the CA, Postal traffic recorded a substantial decline from 8.5 million letters delivered to only 3.5 million between April and June of 2020. This is attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic which impacted letter postage as a means of communication among corporates SME’s and individuals. The Authority also says some public institutions adopted online services during the pandemic affecting the postage of letters as well.
Compared to Q4 last year, the variance year on year is even bigger at 63% in terms of letters posted locally. Consequently, between January and March of this year, the number of letters posted locally had dropped 19.3% compared to the busy festive season which makes sense.
Incoming letter traffic at Posta was also affected massively. According to the report, incoming letter traffic upto 350 grammes was down 35% from 2.68 million between January and March this year to 1.73 million between April and June this year.
The biggest change that we saw was the international outgoing letters upto 350 grammes. That number was down a massive 61.5% from 865,117 last quarter to 332,811 between April and June 2020.
Postal traffic is one of the areas that we have seen get hit the hardest from concrete data published by the CA. Thanks to schools closing, people working from home and governments adopting online ways of communication, postal traffic has dipped tremendously in those three months. However, I expect this number to go up slightly in the next quarter as more and more people go back to their pre-pandemic routine.
