Bangladesh Post Office taps digital commerce

The government department aims to use its vast network of 8,500 post offices to offer the services and become the market leader in ecommerce by 2021, said SS Bhadra, acting director general of the postal division, thedailystar.net reports.

Bangladeshs ecommerce sector is currently growing by around 8% to 10% a year, and the post offices are capable of taking the services to the remotest parts of the country, said Bhadra, the source cites. Though the state-owned entity is yet to make a definitive list of the ecommerce services it will offer, it has decided to dedicate an independent website to ecommerce.

Bangladesh Post Office currently cannot make deliveries for parcels other than personal ones. Australia, India and Japan are among the countries that have launched ecommerce services through the postal network, and the Post Office has already collected reports on those to make a plan.

People will be able to use cash, postal cash cards, or electronic money transfer service (EMTS), all already offered by the Post Office, to pay their ecommerce bills. Postal cash cards, launched in 2011, are a service like any debit card, with cash points available at some 1,446 post offices. Currently, there are some 73,000 postal cash card holders in the country.

The government also introduced EMTS in 2010, which has gained popularity since then, and some 2,750 post offices are equipped to offer the service, as per the Posts and Telecommunication Divisions data. Bangladesh Post Office has suffered revenue losses over the past few years, losing out to faster modes of communication, but hopes to turn the trend with ecommerce, Bhadra said. 

As government officials salaries and other expenses are increasing every year, it has become tough to minimise the gap, but increasing revenue is still an option, with new and improved services, Bhadra said. “The use of personal letters is declining, and very few parcels are being sent regularly, so e-commerce could become the post offices lifeline.”, the source cites.

Till date, some 2,500 post offices have been established as e-centres, and all the 8,500 offices will be brought under the network by June 2017.