Union Minister for Communications and Development of North Eastern Region, Jyotiraditya Scindia, in an interview with a national daily, said that the government is planning to lease out spaces in postal buildings to create new revenue streams. He added that the process of identifying such properties is currently underway.
In an interview with TOI, the minister advocated for a “mindset change” and added, “Whether it’s telecom or department of posts, we must sweat our assets.”
The report further mentions that the first step towards this push is to identify potential properties.
“Therefore, if you have a large piece of land, you can have the post office on the ground and build the whole building and lease out space,” he further said, before adding, “First thing we’re doing is understanding how many properties we have, we are checking where the title papers are, mutation details and identifying major potential properties before we get a developer.”
Scindia also shared that the department has been restructured into six verticals and four horizontals. The six verticals – mail, international mail, parcels, postal life insurance, the Post Office Savings Bank, and citizen-centric services – are being tracked to boost revenue, according to TOI.
“We have undertaken a business process reengineering and converted the department into six verticals and four horizontals…,” he said, before adding, “Every transaction now has a cost structure and we are mapping the revenue.”
The minister also stressed, “We are looking at six strategic business units with profit and loss for each. We are then determining the path to profitability for each of them.”
The government is also rolling out IT 2.0 and has, for the first time, appointed a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) along with Deputy CTOs for each vertical to track profits and losses.
“I look at it turning into a logistics organisation with a huge reach of 1.6 lakh crore post offices. The restructuring and capex by govt will hopefully turn it into a profit centre in five years. Today, our cost structure is Rs 27,000 crore and revenue is around Rs 12,000 crore,” TOI further quoted him as saying.
