New Delhi: Snail Mail as it is known has almost become redundant except for official documentation. Greetings, condolences, personal mail, and love letters all go via its electronic replacement – email. However the snail mail itself cannot be discontinued and it does incur losses. The Parliament was informed on Wednesday that the department of posts incurred a loss of Rs 7.03 per post card and Rs 4.93 on every inland letter in 2013-14.
“Losses are being incurred on every post card and inland letter. As per the cost allocated for the year 2013-14, loss on post card and inland letter was Rs 7.03 and Rs 4.93, respectively,” Minister of communications and information technology Ravi Shankar Prasad said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.
Citing figures the minister added that traffic of inland letters and letters has also increased after two years of decline.
In 2011-12 and 2012-13, there was a 3.3 per cent and 5.2 per cent fall in traffic of inland letters, while the same grew 1.1 per cent to Rs 87.45 crore in 2013-14.
Similarly, for letters, the traffic declined 6.3 per cent in 2011-12 and 2.7 per cent in 2012-13. The traffic grew 3.1 per cent to Rs 208.72 crore in 2013-14.
Speed post traffic grew 14.8 per cent in 2011-12, fell 17.8 per cent in 2012-13 and came back to growth in 2013-14 with 7.8 per cent rise in traffic to Rs 39.87 crore.
In a separate query, the minister said the department has printed 18.16 lakh stamps under the personalized postage stamp scheme ‘My Stamp’ and has earned a total revenue of Rs 4.57 crore.
The highest revenue was garnered from Tamil Nadu (Rs 54.20 lakh), while no revenue came from Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Nagaland under the scheme.
