During the fourth quarter, traffic from postal services operated in competition totalled about 78 million items.
Traffic of liberalised postal services grew by 10.3% over the previous quarter and by 0.8% compared to the same quarter of 2006. The last quarter of each year is always characterised by a spike in traffic because of Christmas and the New Year.
During the quarter being reported, the volume of national postal traffic totalled around 72 million objects, while outgoing international traffic registered six million objects. National traffic made up 93% of total postal traffic operated in competition, with outgoing international traffic representing 7%.
For the seasonal reasons mentioned above, total traffic grew significantly (10%) in this last quarter of the year. Meanwhile the rate of year-on-year growth was less than 1%. The rise seen was principally driven by national traffic, which grew by around 11.8% over the previous quarter and by 1.9% year-on-year.
Outgoing international traffic fell by 5.6% over the previous quarter. In comparison with the same quarter of the previous year, outgoing international traffic fell by 10.9%.
The quarterly fall in outgoing international traffic was principally due to the reduction in correspondence traffic distributed by the companies of CTT. Meanwhile the year-on-year fall, while also partly due to this fact, is further explained by the reduction in editorial mail traffic of Grupo CTT in the international segment. In fact the changes made to legal framework of ''Postage-paid'' have impacted this type of postal object.
In the liberalised area, Grupo CTT was responsible for around 95% of national traffic and for around 84% of outgoing international traffic.
In this period, about 5 million of the total 78 million liberalised postal objects fell within the express mail category, with around 72 million being encompassed by the remaining service categories. Express mail therefore accounted for around 7% of total traffic operated in competition, with the remaining categories making up 93%.
In this quarter, the traffic of services covered by the express mail category grew by 21.6%, mostly driven by a rise in national postal parcels. Meanwhile services outside the express mail category saw an increase of 9.5% driven by a quarterly rise in Grupo CTT editorial and addressed publicity mail in the national segment.
Compared to the same period of 2006, express mail traffic saw an increase of around 7%, again explained by the national distribution. Non-express mail traffic grew by just 0.4%.
Regarding the offer structure, it can be seen that at the end of 2007 the companies of Grupo CTT held a 42.6% share of express mail traffic (down 0.9% on the previous quarter) and a 97.6% share of non-express mail traffic.
Consult:
- Postal services https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?categoryId=277884
