UPU officer on two-week mission

26.OCT.07

The Regional Advisor of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) is currently in St. Vincent and the Grenadines assisting with the formulation of an Integrated Postal Reform and Development Plan (IPDP) for the postal sector. {{more}}

Loretta Charlemagne will be in the country for two weeks, and is in the second week of her mission.

Established in 1874, the Universal Postal Union (UPU), with its Headquarters in the Swiss capital Bern, is the second oldest United Nations specialized agency. The mandate of UPU is to promote efficient, accessible and quality universal postal services to facilitate communication in the world.

The main focus of the IPDP is the guarantee of the universal postal service obligation to all citizens by the government of the country.

The Integrated Postal Development Plan or “IPDP” is a methodology that has been developed to help fashion a standardized approach to reforming and modernizing postal sectors worldwide, and more specifically in developing countries. One of the IPDP’s strengths is that it incorporates not only the state of the art in postal development but also many of the strategies used by the World Bank and other multilateral development institutions.

For example, the IPDP underscores postal services as essential elements of the economic and social structure of all countries, and of the developing countries in particular. Accordingly, postal services represent a unique asset and a true instrument for development, and play a key role in a country’s economic and social organization, with whole swathes of industry and trade and public and financial services sectors relying on postal infrastructure.