During the second quarter of 2010, total traffic from postal services declined by around 8.8% over the previous quarter to 278 million objects. The second quarter of each year is habitually marked by a drop in traffic to this extent compared to the first quarter. In comparison to 2nd quarter 2009, total postal traffic fell by almost 2.4%.
By type of object, around 98% of postal traffic is comprised by correspondence (which includes addressed publicity and editorial mail), which fell by 9.1% over the quarter and by 2.6% year-on-year. Meanwhile parcels grew by 2.7% over the quarter and by 7.4% compared to the second quarter of 2009, representing just 2% of total traffic in terms of number of objects.
Meanwhile, an average of 26.1 postal objects were distributed in the quarter per inhabitant, 2.5 fewer objects per capita than in the previous quarter and 0.7 fewer objects per capita than in the 2nd quarter of 2009.
Traffic of the liberalised area represents around 21% of the total.
As usual in the second quarter of each year, postal traffic operated in competition fell (-3.7%) compared to the previous fourth quarter. Meanwhile, the declining trend seen in this type of traffic continued (-4% year-on-year).
In the quarter being reported, the volume of national postal traffic fell by 3% compared to previous quarter, to around 55 million objects. Outgoing international traffic fell, by 10.8% over the quarter, to around 4.2 million objects.
The fall in national traffic is essentially explained by the changes seen in the volume of the national correspondence of CTT.
National traffic now represents 93% of total postal traffic operated in competition, while outgoing international traffic represents the remaining 7%.
In the liberalised area Grupo CTT is responsible for 89% of national traffic and around 80.5% of international outgoing traffic.
In this period, 6.4 million of the total 59.3 million liberalised postal objects fell within the express mail category, with around 52.9 million being encompassed by the remaining service categories. Express mail therefore accounted for around 11% of total traffic operated in competition, with the remaining categories making up 89% of total liberalised traffic.
In terms of the offer structure, it can be seen that in second quarter 2010, the companies of Grupo CTT retained a share of 39.6% of express mail traffic and 94% of non-express mail traffic.
