Service tariffs used by Latvian Post will likely change again next year, said the company’s Chairman of the Board Ģirts Rudzītis in an interview to LETA.
He said no one can predict what will happen next, what costs could arise and how inflation could change. However, the main reason for increasing tariffs is the drop in demand for traditional postal services.
“In the last three years inflation has exceeded productivity, especially in the logistics sector, where there has been an enormous rise in costs for all resources. We’ve been able to partially compensate this, but not everything. It is our duty to apply the costs that the company has when providing the universal postal service (UPP), which is why a review of tariffs was also required last year, and previously tariffs were not changed for two years,” explained Rudzītis.
He compared that price-wise Latvia is approximately on the level of Estonia. Lithuania has slightly lower prices, but even this country may see some changes soon.
Rudzītis stressed that Latvian Post has been growing productivity year after year – in the sorting of letters and the modernisation of road transport no longer require such high costs, so there are compensatory mechanisms in place so that tariffs do not increase as sharply as resource prices.
Commenting on demand for traditional postal services, he said that there are no major surprises expected globally or locally, because the volume of letters sent keeps decreasing every year, because people now prefer digital communication.
He mentioned that 85% of all letters are sent by municipal and state institutions. Only 15% of letters are sent by private persons.
On the other hand, the fluctuations in the delivery of the subscribed press are not so extreme. “There will always be people who prefer subscribed press in paper form. This is where, I believe, Latvian Post has a socially responsible approach. There is so much information circulating nowadays that there is now a lot of information noise. In such a situation it is very important to ensure the opportunity to deliver subscribed press to all of Latvia’s residents,” added Rudzītis.
LETA previously reported that the 1st of January marked new UPP tariffs used by Latvian Post.
From the 1st of January of 2025, the cost of sending a simple domestic letter weighing up to 20 g increased by 39.4% – from EUR 1.65 to EUR 2.3 without value added tax (VAT). At the same time, sending a registered domestic letter weighing up to 20 g from this year costs EUR 4.35, while sending an insured domestic letter weighing up to 20 g costs EUR 4.5.