OREANDA-NEWS. November 18, 2008. Optimal ways of improvement of the world postal space and necessity to support universal postal services have been discussed by Minister of Transport and Communications of Ukraine Yosyp Vinsky and Director General of the Universal Postal Union Edward Dayan within the framework of a meeting of Administrative Council of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) underway in Bern, Switzerland.

 UPU Director General Edward Dayan stressed that Ukraine’s post ensures a sufficiently high level of quality of the services as the first among the states-members of this international organization has received UPU Certificate of the highest A-level (golden).

In the course of the event Yosyp Vinsky and Edward Dayan have dwelt upon issues of urgent need to improve operation of Ukrainian postal service, notably, by means of optimization of its network. Yosyp Vinsky emphasized that the Ministry of Communications and Transport had completed elaborating of a concept of the National Program of Development of Postal Services in Ukraine. Within the nearest time the draft document will be forwarded for the Govt’s considering.

The meeting also dealt with issues of creating a universal postal financial network. The Minister of Transport and Communications of Ukraine underlined the significance and timeliness an attention of international postal community, concentrated on the development of financial services. “The post structures have to play a peculiar role in providing population with services,” Yosyp Vinsky emphasized. As the Minister put it, after rapid loss of trust to the banking structures people feel no cautious to transfer money via post, for instance”.

The Universal Postal Union (UPU) was set up in 1874, in Bern, Switzerland. Primarily, the Union comprised 22 countries, being 191 members for now.

Since 1948 the UPU is a specialized agency of the UNO.

In 2008 Ukraine has been chosen to compose the Administrative Council of the UPU for a term 2008-2012.

Nowadays the postal services are provided in 661 post-offices. Over 400 bn letters and more than 6 bn parcels had been sent via post network last year.

Almost 83% of post traffic falls to 28 industrially developed countries. Around 5.5 mn persons work at the post-offices: being one of the biggest employers in all the states.