If you are a fan of letters, then start stocking up on stamps, because sending mail will become much more expensive next year. It will cost more than one euro to send a letter. La Poste announced on Thursday that mail prices will increase by 4.7% on average from January 2021.
Thus, it will be necessary to pay 12 euro cents more than at present for the purchase of the priority red stamp (1.28 euro) and 11 cents more for the green stamp which crosses, for the first time, the euro threshold (1.08).
Next January, the price of the red stamp, for example, will have more than doubled in the space of ten years. However, between 2011 and 2014, prices had remained fairly stable. But, since 2015, the increase has been considerable.
How is the price increase for the stamp decided?
French law entrusts the Telecoms Regulatory Authority (Arcep) with the task of regulating the prices of postal service services to "ensure compliance with the principle of affordable prices, while ensuring the sustainability of the universal service".
“We make assumptions about the drop in mail volume and we establish a ceiling for the period of supervision. The current tariff framework, which covers the period 2019-2022, was decided in 2017 and is capped at 5%, inflation included, per year, ”explains Sébastien Soriano, president of Arcep to Le Parisien. "And it is La Poste which chooses the tariff," he continues.
In a context of structural decline in postal volumes, according to Arcep, this ceiling makes it possible to maintain the financial balance of the universal service, taking into account the adaptations of charges of La Poste. It shares the efforts between the company (lower costs) and consumers (higher prices).
What is La Poste's justification?
To explain this new increase in the price range, La Poste justified, in a press release, that the increase is necessary to "ensure the sustainability of the universal service with high quality in a context of an acceleration of the decline in volumes. mail, and to continue to modernize the offers to meet the uses and needs of its customers ”.
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“There is a significant drop in mail volumes,” insists the La Poste group to Le Parisien. "In 2020, this reduction in volumes will result in a loss of turnover of more than 650 million euros", they add.
The company also announces its intention to "modernize and adapt" its industrial network, in particular to meet the challenge of the growth of national and international parcels ", which represents" cumulative expenditure of several hundred million euros. ".
Is mail volume dropping that much?
The use of postal services follows a downward trend due to changes in usage as well as to rising prices. Not only do the French write less, but companies and administrations communicate more and more via the Internet.
An estimate of the evolution of the volume in France was made in February for the current year, it will remain to be seen whether the health crisis has not further upset these data.
"This phenomenon is due to the substitution of digital exchanges for sending mail, in particular by large customers such as the banking sector, public administrations and telephone operators", explains the Court of Auditors in a report on the postal service facing the drop in mail.
If there is no more mail, will La Poste close?
Originally, La Poste's role consisted primarily of delivering mail. In 1991, its mail and postcard distribution business represented 71% of the public operator's revenues. But as soon as it realized that the letter was losing ground with the digital revolution, La Poste sought to reinvent itself.
The group has therefore implemented a strategy to reduce the dependence of its turnover on traditional mail. It aims to compensate for its fall by means of growth drivers that are, mainly, parcels, banking and local services, by leaning on digital developments.