Courier services Why international courier service companies cant entering the local market.

Courier is a person or company employed to delivery messages, packages and mail. Courier are distinguished from ordinary mail services by features such as speed , security, tracking, signature, specialization and individualization of services and committed delivery times, which are optional for most everyday mail services. As premium service, couriers are usually more expensive than usual mail services. And their use is typically restricted to packages where one or more of these features are considered important enough to warrant the cost. Different courier services operate on all scales from within specific town or cities, to regional national or global services. The world largest courier companies are Aramex, DHL, FedEx, TNT, UPS.

$ Service sector of BD has reached its peak (52% in 2006). Among this the courier service facility stands only to 0.812% (in 2006) $ Educational level of the customers of the BD has a great impact of using courier services. $ If the courier service industry can expend their booth, customer services facilities and the regional offices keeping all those in mind, they can perform better. Government delivers postal services for the citizen through post office. This post office was established by enacting a law called post office act 1898. The postal act is a more than century year old now. With the evolution time, vast change happened now in socio economic activities in the global arena and that is also reflected to BD. Although information communication technology and technological revolution has been taken place in the postal services of the developed countries but BD is lagging behind. Our postal service is not able to deliver global standard services either in domestic or in overseas countries. Post office act 1898 authorized the post office to deliver this service in all monopolistic nature in all over Bangladesh. Considering the increasing the demand for the courier service and in pursuant of the demands of the courier services association of BD(CSAB), national board of revenue

(NBR) gave them so-28 code through issuing SRO-17 in 200to operate this business . in 2004 another SRO #173 was issued fixing 15% VAT on its services . in 2007 another SRO#130 was also issued and enlisted courier services as service provider and reduced VAT rate of its income from 15% to 4.5%. it was amending section 4(1)and 58 of the post office act 1898. Post office department is a government organization .courier service is highly essential and accepted cross section of people of Bangladesh. As per office act 1898, no private operator is followed to deliver postal services. Any body is doing so is penalized Tk.500 for carrying each letter. Under this act, courier is not allowed to operate business . That is why they have been delivering letters in the name of document. Courier services employ more than 100000 people and deposit a large amount of money to the government exchequer in the form VAT/Tax. That is why government should pay attention to this sector and their issues to be considered while formulating rules. There is a great hope that the government has accepted the recommendation of regulatory reform commission and planned to amend the post office act 1898. The government has to come up with positive actions to reform the relevant section of the post office act and formulate rules for operating courier service. The courier service of BD has many grievances against such draft rules as there were not formulated through sharing views with concerned stakeholders. They have claimed that before enacting the rules the authority needs to sit with stakeholders and formulation a draft rules the same should be well circulated in the website, newspaper, radio, TV etc. But the initiative has not yet to be taken. it is expected that the government would prepare an action plan to reform post office act to legalize courier services.

Secretary, ministry of post of telecommunication DG, department of Post Two representative of FBCCI Five representatives from registered courier service association One representative from ministry of finance One representative from ministry of law. Speaker: Director (deputy secretary) Regulatory reform commission.

United kingdom: The genus of the UK sameday courier market stems from the London taxi company but soon expanded. During the late 1970s small provincial and regional companies were popping up through the country. Today there are large companies offering next courier services including city link ltd and UK divisions of worldwide courier s such as FedEx, DHL, TNT, UPS and fastway couriers. The man and Van / freelance courier business model is highly popular in the united kingdom with thousands upon thousands of independent couriers and localized companies , offering next day and sameday services. This is likely to be so popular because of the low business requirement and lucrative number of items sent within everyday. However since the dawn of electronic age the way in which business use courier has changed dramatically . Prior to email and the ability to create PDFs, document represents significant proportion of business . However the past 5 years documentation revenues have decreased by 50 percent . in addition customer also demanded more from their courier partners. Royal mail was up until recently a reasonable competitor of the most of the large companies . offering next day and special delivery services. With companies like Royal Mail, it can be difficult to draw a clear cut line between postal services and couriers. United States The courier industry has long held an important place in USA commerce and been involved in pivotal moments in the history such as westward migration and gold rush. Wells fergo was founded in 1852 and rapidly became the peeminent package delivery company . The courier industry in the united states is a59 billion dollar industry, with 86 % of the business share by four companies including DHL, FedEx, UPS. And remaining 14 % shared among almost 11900 other small businesses ranging in size from 1 employee to 600 employe. This is sameday business and strong offline and online business like NAPAREX and USA couriers.