HONG KONG 2005

Established in 1841, Hongkong Post enjoys a proud heritage and a long history of serving Hong Kong. The progressive and dynamic postal organisation, which celebrating its 10th anniversary as a trading fund in 2005, is firmly entrenched locally and has a wide global reach.

Hongkong Post is committed to providing accessible, reliable and affordable postal services to the people of Hong Kong. It was rated highly in the 2005 independent public perception survey, with 96 per cent of the general public, 95 per cent of business customers and 97 per cent of philatelists indicating they were very satisfied or satisfied with its services. The survey ranked Hongkong Post in the top three among the major service organisations in Hong Kong for the seventh consecutive year.

Hongkong Post was highly commended in the Transformation Award in the 2005 World Mail Awards, the only major award event which seeks to recognise and honour outstanding performances of postal administrations worldwide.

Hongkong Post's Speedpost achieved, for the third year in a row, the highest Gold Level Certification in the Universal Postal Union Express Mail Service Cooperative's Audit and Measurement Programme. The programme recognises outstanding performance in terms of delivery, tracking and other criteria.

Hongkong Post underlined its commitment to service excellence by working with Hong Kong Association for Customer Service Excellence (HKACE) to inaugurate Hong Kong's first Customer Service Charter in January. In recognition of its high level of achievement in the pursuit of service excellence, Hongkong Post received four Customer Service Excellence Awards in 2005 from HKACE, including the grand champion award in the team award category. It also won eight awards in the 2005 Civil Service Outstanding Service Award Scheme organised by Civil Service Bureau. In the 2005 Hong Kong Award for Industries, Hongkong Post received the Productivity and Quality Award.

Hongkong Post handled some 1.28 billion items of mail, or 3.5 million items daily, serving 2.5 million residential and business addresses. This represents a slight increase of 0.05 per cent over 2004, with local mail accounting for around 85 per cent of the items processed. Some 28 939 tonnes of international mail, including Speedpost and parcels, were processed, representing a 4.7 per cent increase over 2004.

Hongkong Post recorded a high success rate of 99.7 per cent for next-day territory-wide delivery of local letters, beating the 98 per cent target set in the performance pledge, which represents the world's highest delivery standard.

To enhance customer service, an e-Request function was introduced in December allowing customers to make online requests for re-delivery of Local CourierPost (LCP) items, and select a post office for delivery over the counter of items including registered and recorded-delivery items, parcels and LCP items.

In July, Hongkong Post joined Australia Post, China Post, Japan Post, Korea Post and the United States Postal Service to align their networks and resources to deliver a new level of Speedpost service in Asia Pacific Rim markets. The linking of these networks provides their customers with a superior date-certain Speedpost delivery service. Customers can also track shipments online, all the way from posting to delivery.

To promote its LCP service in festive seasons, Hongkong Post introduced a series of charming gifts in February and a 'Valentine Local CourierPost' prepaid envelope for delivery on Valentine's Day.

Hong Kong stamps are recognised worldwide for their artistry and innovative design. During the year, 10 sets of special stamps reflecting a variety of cultural, nostalgic and contemporary themes were issued: Alphabet Stamps; Year of the Rooster; Children Stamps — Andersen's Fairy Tales; Hong Kong Goldfish II; The 600th Anniversary of Zheng He's Maritime Expeditions; Creative Industries; Four Great Inventions of Ancient China; Hong Kong Disneyland Grand Opening; Hong Kong, China-Portugal Joint Issue on Fishing Villages and Hong Kong Pop Singers.

In November, Hongkong Post issued a set of Postage Prepaid Postcards to commemorate the Handover Ceremony of the 2009 East Asian Games from Macao to Hong Kong, and another set in December, to commemorate Hong Kong's hosting of the Sixth World Trade Organisation Ministerial Conference.

In collaboration with the Education and Manpower Bureau, the Hong Kong Museum of History and local philatelic enthusiasts, the sixth Inter-school Stamp Exhibits Competition was organised to promote philately among students. With the support of the Guangdong Philately Association, exhibits from young Mainland people were also displayed in addition to exhibits by Hong Kong students.

The service 'Stamp OnNet' was launched in July to enable customers to access the Local Standing Order Service online and manage their accounts for philatelic products round the clock at their convenience.

To foster the growth of e-commerce and provide a simple and more efficient way for posting large quantities of registered air mail items, the Bulk Registered Air Mail Service was launched in August. This provides a simple, economical and secure B2C delivery service for online sellers to send their products overseas.

The Hongkong Post Certification Authority helps facilitate electronic commerce by embedding e-Certs in smart ID cards as a secure infrastructure and environment for electronic transactions. By December, the authority had issued more than 1.5 million digital certificates to businesses, government departments and individuals.

Hongkong Post continues to leverage its extensive retail and distribution network to deliver prompt, reliable and cost-effective logistics services. The Hong Kong/Mainland Gift Fulfillment Service with China Post allows people or companies in Hong Kong to send a range of gift sets including bouquets, cakes, flower baskets and fruit baskets to over 2 000 cities on the Mainland. Lunar New Year gift sets were introduced in January and special mooncake gift sets were available in August. Locally, Hongkong Post extended its one-stop fulfillment service to new reputable online shops.

The PayThruPost service was further extended to include more utilities and telecommunication companies.

In March, Hongkong Post developed a value-added tax (VAT) prepayment service for mail sent to the United Kingdom. This new service allows merchants in Hong Kong to prepay the UK's VAT on behalf of their customers, a move that helps local merchants promote their products to UK customers.

In January and February, Hongkong Post volunteered to collect donations for tsunami victims on behalf of five international relief organisations, as well as from a government-led fund-raising event, using the one-stop payment service of PayThruPost via all Hongkong Post outlets.

The 34th International Letter-writing Competition for young people attracted more than 9 700 entries from over 500 schools helping students to improve their letter-writing skills and enhance their creative powers.

Once again, Hongkong Post held a 'Love and Care Day' in September giving staff and customers a chance to express gratitude for their mutual support. The public were encouraged to send one personal letter up to 50g free of charge to a local address at 10 selected post offices to promote a caring culture via physical mail.

Hongkong Post participated in regional and international meetings to encourage the pursuit of performance excellence, partnership and product development within the postal community. It participates as a delegate of the People's Republic of China in meetings and activities organised by the Universal Postal Union (UPU) and the Asian-Pacific Postal Union (APPU). It attended the UPU Postal Operations Council and Council of Administration meetings held in January and October in Berne, Switzerland, and the ninth APPU Congress held in May-June in Seoul, Republic of Korea. Hongkong Post, representing China, co-chaired the three meetings of UPU Terminal Dues Project Group, and was re-elected as a board member of the UPU Express Mail Service Cooperative and the Asia Pacific Post Cooperative (APPC).

In September, Hongkong Post helped the APPC organise an Operations Workshop in Hong Kong to provide a forum for postal administrations in the region to work collectively to develop and improve the standard and performance of their express mail and parcel services.