{"id":559912,"date":"2022-02-18T15:15:39","date_gmt":"2022-02-18T13:15:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=559912"},"modified":"2022-02-18T15:15:39","modified_gmt":"2022-02-18T13:15:39","slug":"former-south-african-post-office-boss-on-how-the-business-can-be-saved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/559912\/former-south-african-post-office-boss-on-how-the-business-can-be-saved\/","title":{"rendered":"Former South African Post Office boss on how the business can be saved"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former chief executive officer of the South African Post Office, Mark Barnes says that a private sector partnership with the government can revive the country’s postal service.<\/p>\n

“There is a groundswell of private sector eagerness, waiting to partner with government,” Barnes said in an interview with ENCA<\/a> this week.<\/p>\n

In September 2021, Barnes tabled a proposal with the government, which would see him lead a consortium to purchase at least 60%, but no more than 75% of the Post Office.<\/p>\n

“The post office has a dual mandate, commercial and developmental. It requires the state to be a partner, but it requires business to run it,” said Barnes. “What we are looking to do is find a place where the informal market can be comfortable in the formal digital environment. That is the post office.<\/p>\n

“Imagine you could go to a place where you know the people, where you go to get vaccinated, collect your antiretrovirals, pay your accounts or collect post; that place can be the Post Office,” he said.<\/p>\n

“The post office could be linked to the state – like with Home Affairs. In partnership, we could have a massive supercomputer upon which all people of South Africa reside.”<\/p>\n

Barnes drew a comparison to online retail giant Amazon, which bought a share in the United States Postal Service for them to have physical infrastructure that can assist in delivering parcels.<\/p>\n

To secure a vested interest and make the predicted hardships of the initial years of its revival beneficial, Barnes said he would offer to give shares to workers within the Post Office.<\/p>\n

When asked if the government had replied to him about the possible deal, he said they had not. “I am respectful with the government; even if they do not respond to me, they should respond to private-public relations,” said Barnes.<\/p>\n

When asked why he would want to buy an institution in such a dire state, constantly making losses, he said: “It’s not a post office. It’s a commercially irreplaceable footprint with more physical representation than any bank in South Africa; it’s got the biggest depository of peoples data in South Africa with 18 million beneficiaries, 11.8 addresses, six million depositors and it’s linked to the national payment system through the bank.”<\/p>\n

Barnes said that he and his investors would buy it at its net asset value agreed upon by the auditor-general minus the agreed forecast losses placed before the portfolio committee that show extended losses and required capital.<\/p>\n

The most recent SAPO annual report (2019\/2020), published a year late in March 2021, outlines the financial results for the year ended March 2020. The state-owned entity recorded financial losses of R1.77 billion while its current liabilities exceeded assets by R1.5 billion.
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Barnes also previously said that SAPO\u2019s opportunities included participating “in the highly lucrative” e-Commerce space, the digitisation of its processes, the courier space, as well as those activities which fall within SAPO\u2019s legal mandate, namely the distribution of parcels with a mass of up to 1kg.<\/p>\n

\n

Read: Plan to turn taxi ranks into mini-CBDs in South Africa<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former chief executive officer of the South African Post Office, Mark Barnes says that a private sector partnership with the government can revive the country’s postal service.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":560290,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[10333,3003],"class_list":["post-559912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-government","tag-post-office"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559912"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":560446,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559912\/revisions\/560446"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}