Zimbabwe: Zimpost Eyes Over U.S.$16 Million Turnover

State-owned Zimpost sees 2015 turnover in excess of $16 million driven primarily by growth in its electronic money transfer system, Zipcash.

ZipCash was launched in 2013 and has achieved steady growth in transactions to over $4 million per month.

In an interview, Zimpost managing director Douglas Zimbango said the facility will continue to grow as more Postal Administrations join the platform,

"ZipCash transactions have been growing as more postal administrations join the platform. The turnover for 2015 will be in excess of $16 million," he said.

Currently Zimbabwe, through the platform, is transacting with countries such as Nigeria, South Africa, Botswana, Kenya and Tanzania.

However, Mr Zimbango said ZipCash can only be able to effectively compete with competition if it goes mobile.

"Currently, The Universal Postal Union is working on making the IFS platform that ZipCash is riding on, go mobile. ZipCash will go mobile once the platform is ready," he said.

Mr Zimbango said Zimpost is looking at the coming year with excitement as a number of their plans will come to fruition.

He said the move to automate Zimpost offices work was in progress.

The project includes the installation of wide area network links at various post offices country-wide.

"A total of 115 post offices are on optic fibre while 31 are on VSAT wide area network. These offices are online enabling customers to transact real time.

"This year you will see a further revamp of the front office in response to customer demands and developments in the sector," he said.

Mr Zimbango also said the franchising exercise was still going on and 23 Post Offices spread across rural and urban areas have been franchised so far.

"The franchising exercise is moving on very well. We still have a number of post offices that are still to be franchised and we believe that by April next year all the post offices would have been taken up," he said.

The company, whose market share has shrunk due to new information technology based platforms and innovations proposed to franchise 54 post offices countrywide to its employees.

The company recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Chinese courier company YTO express to partner in the parcel service sub-sector.

SOURCE:THE HERALD