12 Arab countries attend UPU workshop and symposium on EMS services, hosted by Emirates Post Group

The four-day event held in Dubai focused on Arab region

Dubai, March 24, 2015: A four-day workshop and symposium on latest trends in EMS -- the Express Mail Service offered by postal operators around the world --  organized by the Universal Postal Union (UPU) began in Dubai on Monday, with attendance of representatives of postal administrations from 12 Arab countries.

Hosted by Emirates Post Group, the event is supported by UPU Postal Technology Centre and Le Groupe La Poste of France. The theme of the workshop is ‘quality of service improvement, the supply chain and e-commerce development through EMS in the Arab region.’

Mr. Abdullah Mohammad Al Ashram, CEO of Emirates Post, who inaugurated the event, urged Arab postal administrations to keep track of new developments in mail delivery, and underlined the need for integrating the services with e-commerce.

In a message read out on the occasion, Mr. Bishar A. Hussein, Director General of UPU International Bureau, noted that letter volumes worldwide continued to slide, while packets and parcels continued to move up. He pointed out that e-commerce was opening up new opportunities, with business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) merchandise traffic posting noticeable gains in recent years.

He revealed that EMS exports in 2014 reached 54.5 million items, an increase of 9 % over 2013 figures. Europe saw the biggest increase of 32%, followed by the Arab region (12%), Asia Pacific (8%) and the Caribbean (3%).

“The UPU will provide postal operators with ongoing assistance in acquiring professional expertise that will allow them to modernize the postal services to better meet customer expectations in an evolving postal market,” Mr. Hussein added.

The opening remarks were made by Patrick Richon, Chairman of UPU EMS Cooperative. This was followed by a session on ‘E-commerce – Global and regional trends and customer perspectives’ which covered topics like Global trends and opportunities for Posts, Postal trade facilitation trends and UPU initiatives to facilitate trade through the postal network.

The second session on ‘Positioning the postal sector to meet market needs’ featured presentations on the UPU E-commerce Program, E-Commerce IT Frameworks,  UPU E-commerce Guide, Secure E-Commerce transactions and e-commerce experience of Groupe La Poste France.

In the third session themed on ‘Strategic and business development of EMS to meet market needs’, several speakers shared the EMS experience in the Arab region.

Nasser Fathi Qaddoumi, Postal Expert for International Relations and Accounts, Emirates Post, presented key features and achievements in EMS at Emirates Post, followed by Musaed Al-Battal, General Manager of EMS, Saudi Post and Anoual Ouahid, Director of Operations, EMS Chronopost International Morocco.