The industry has expressed support for the Government's move to fully liberalise Singapore's postal sector as they believe that liberalisation will be a catalyst for the postal sector's growth

The Singapore Government has announced that come 1 April 2007, it will open Singapore's Basic Mail Services market, and render the postal sector fully liberalised.

This decision will effectively end Singapore Post Ltd's (SingPost) 15-year monopoly of the Basic Mail Services market, which includes the collection and delivery of letters and postcards, within, into and out of Singapore. The decision was made following a public consultation in August 2006 by the IDA.

In 2004, Singapore's postal services sector generated an annual revenue of more than S$1 billion. Liberalisation is expected to generate cost savings of S$8 million to S$25 million per year over the next two to three years, with businesses standing to benefit the most. Currently, businesses account for almost 95 per cent of Singapore's total domestic mail.

The decision underlines the Government's commitment towards building an open economy and strengthening Singapore's position as a regional business hub. The newly liberalised segments opens up fresh business possibilities, including value-added services and tailored postal solutions such as letter mail tracking and staggered delivery of letters. According to Dr Lee Boon Yang, Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, the industry has expressed their support for this move as they believe that liberalisation will be a catalyst for the postal sector's growth.

The newly liberalised segment presents new business possibilities, and creates room for greater service innovation

Dr Lee reassured the public that there will be no disruption to Basic Mail Services and consumers' interests had been taken into account in the proposed changes. "The Government is mindful of concerns on mail integrity and security and the need to preserve high user confidence in the public postal system," he said.

To ensure this, Dr Lee said that the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) will be putting in place appropriate regulatory frameworks to ensure that consumers continue to enjoy high service quality for basic mail service as well as maintain the public confidence in the reliability and availability of basic mail services.