Acting Director-General of public joint-stock company Ukrposhta Igor Smelyansky has pointed out the difficult financial condition of the company due to the lack of correspondence of current regulated tariffs to the level of their production cost, although he denies information about possible bankruptcy of the company.
“Yesterday the mass media spread information about the possible bankruptcy of Ukrposhta, an assessment of the financial condition of the company is erroneous,” the head of Ukrposhta said in his address to the media on the company’s website.
He said that the company has already overcome this crisis situation due to the growth of the minimum wage in 2017, and therefore will be able to balance the budget this year.
According to Smelyansky, there are two alternative scenarios for achieving this balance: Ukrposhta brings the currently regulated tariffs to the level of their cost or continues to provide only those services which tariffs are not lower than their cost.
“To avoid a difficult financial situation, negotiations are currently underway with the regulators and the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, and by the end of June, Ukrposhta will determine what scenario it will choose,” Smelyansky said.
He said that tariffs for letters, delivery of periodicals, as well as a tariff for the distribution of pensions, which had not changed since 2004, are unprofitable for the company.
“We are aware that most of Ukrposhta’s network was created to provide regulated services, so the refusal to provide them will lead to a significant reduction in the network and the number of personnel,” Smelyansky said.
He also said that on December 5, 2017, the Tariff Council under the Ministry of Infrastructure approved a decision to revise the tariff for the delivery of pensions, but so far the new tariffs have not been approved by the Pension Fund.
At the same time, according to ISmelyansky, this does not concern the bankruptcy of the company.
Earlier, the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NSJU) made public information about the possible bankruptcy of Ukrposhta with reference to the first deputy general director of the company Oleksandr Cherniavsky.
The NSJU said that Ukrposhta explained the proposal to large publishers to postpone the payments to the editors’ offices following the results of the subscription campaign using this argument.
