Pakistan Post jumps five places in world ranking, now placed 62nd: UPU report

State-owned Pakistan Post has improved five places in the world ranking, moving up from 67 to 62, according to the 2021 report issued by the Universal Postal Union (UPU).

The report, published earlier this month, examines the state of postal development around the world, building on the Integrated Index for Postal Development (2IPD), which this year ranked 168 countries across four dimensions: reliability, reach, relevance and resilience.

The UPU, a United Nations-specialised agency and the postal sector's primary forum for international cooperation, has been releasing the 2IPD ranking on a yearly basis since 2017.

In its 'Postal Development Report 2021', Pakistan Post was placed 62nd out of 168 countries with a score of 39.21. The 2021 2IPD ranking had a global average score of 33.

In the 2020 report, the composite index summarised information about the performance of postal operators in 170 countries. The 2020 edition had a global average score of 35.6. Pakistan was ranked 67th with a score of 39.36.

According to details mentioned in the report, a score above 60 shows that a country’s postal development is among the top 20% in the world. Good performers have a score between 35 and 60, which shows an upper-intermediate level of performance.

Meanwhile, Switzerland, Germany and Austria top the ranking, followed by Japan and France.

Belarus, Brazil, Ghana, Singapore and Tunisia have also obtained encouraging results and currently lead their respective regional groups.

As in all past editions of the ranking, the group of industrialised countries (ICs) has recorded the highest average score at 68.25, followed by Eastern Europe and the CIS (49.82), Asia Pacific (28.63), with and Africa (17.85) being ranked the lowest.

The report uses information embedded in the 2IPD’s reliability pillar, which measures the delivery times of mail items, to quantify the operational disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The main finding was that logistical bottlenecks experienced in 2020 have severely affected the reliability of postal operations, with average domestic delivery times increasing by 13% in 2020 with respect to 2019, before returning to pre-crisis levels in 2021.

The results of the report also suggested that, even if disruptions in global supply chains were eventually absorbed, gaps in postal development were likely to remain a considerable challenge for the sector in the coming years.