International mail under focus at Qatar congress

Manama: More than 2,200 postal service leaders and stakeholders have started looking into proposals to modify the rules and regulations governing the exchange of international mail.

The participants at the 25th Universal Postal Congress in Qatar will also study major recommendations in governing postal financial services, quality of service, postal security, e-commerce and trade facilitation.

“This Congress embraces the values of the postal community, but also heralds the future, that of a modernised, efficient and solid organisation, and of global postal services at the heart of the economy, trade and the information society,” Edouard Dayan, Director-General of the Universal Postal Union (UPU), said at the opening plenary session in Doha on Monday.

Held under the theme “New world, new strategy”, the three-week congress brings together postal leaders and stakeholders from the Universal Postal Union’s 192 member countries who decide on the global postal sector’s future every four years, the UPU said in a statement.

A number of crises have characterised the last four years, bringing new, unprecedented challenges for the postal sector and the UPU, Dayan said.

“These new realities have known no borders and have extended to all postal operators worldwide, regardless of their level of development. The Congress that opens today must champion the values of our organization: universality, solidarity and communication among peoples,” he said. “This Congress embraces the values of the postal community, but also heralds the future, that of a modernised, efficient and solid organisation,” he said.

The congress hopes to adopt the Doha Postal Strategy, the UPU’s strategic document for the future that underlines the postal network’s three dimensions — physical, electronic and financial — as well as interconnection, governance and development as Abdul Rahman Ali Al Aqaily, the Chairman of the General Postal Corporation of Qatar, was designated as congress chairman during the opening plenary.

As host of the congress, Qatar will also automatically assume the chairmanship of the UPU’s Council of Administration for 2013-2016.

Countries will be elected to the UPU’s official bodies — the Council of Administration and the Council of Postal Operations — on October 10, following the election of a new director-general and deputy director-general for the UPU.

Their mandate will start in January and will run for four years.