Times of Malta revealed that Maltapost has raised the price of both inbound and outbound mail as ‘its role as the national postal service is costing it more money than it makes.’ 

The price of a stamp to send a letter locally was upped from €0.30 to €0.37 whereas letters going overseas will now cost €1.25, which is a €0.39 increase over the previous €0.86. 

Speaking to Times of Malta, Maltapost executive director David Attard said that the company was struggling to cope with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain issues, Brexit, the rising airfreight costs as well as the introduction of VAT on low-value purchases made from outside the EU. 

Despite this, sending physical letters from literally any place to any other place in the country remains one of the cheapest economic activities in modern life.

Malta still retains the cheapest postal rates in the EU, even with the new tariffs. Denmark has the most expensive tariffs, with domestic mail costing €3.88. 

The Maltese tariff was sustained as the cheapest one in the EU every year since 2008, a study by Deutsche Post revealed. However, chairman Joseph Said highlighted concerns about profitability, saying that Maltapost simply cannot be expected to continue fulfilling certain services at a financial loss.

This follows dropping in profit in 2021 to €2.35 million from 2020’s €2.8 million and 2019’s €2.98 million. 

Maltapost currently deploys around 800 personnel six days a week to collect mail from around 600 letter boxes around the country. This is done to serve its ‘universal service obligation’ which means that the company must provide an affordable service to each person in the country, no matter where they live or where they wish to send their mail. 

#MaltaDaily