In early April, after the meetings with the company’s management and the board, the Ministry obliged the company to control and solve the issue of delayed distribution of parcels sent from abroad by the 15th of April.
“We appreciate the immense efforts of postal service workers and management in processing much higher volumes of mail, and under the pressure of the pandemic at that. The situation is stabilising but remains difficult. There are still many complaints from customers and other stakeholders. The control plan implemented by the management should improve the situation,” Marius Skuodis said.
He stated that with a major change in Europe to occur on 1 July, Lithuanian Post is to encounter yet another challenging task of delivering postal items from third countries. A VAT reduction is to be abolished as of the 1st of July. All parcels from third countries (outside the EU) are to be taxed; there will be a compulsory declaration imposed and small parcels will have to be customs cleared. The volume of declared parcels in 2021–2022 is estimated to sky-rocket from 37 thousand to 10 million.
The implementation of this change highly depends on the Customs Department actions, future changes and solutions. The increased parcel flow will have to be managed with the help of IT systems. Moreover, Lithuanian Post is to shift to the Address Register of the Centre of Registers.
“The control of changes awaiting in July falls under the responsibility of the company’s management and the board. The company must clearly communicate future changes and ways to ensure the consumers’ interests,” the Minister said.
During the Minister’s meeting with the LP board it was established that in addition to preparing for the changes coming as of 1 July, the company, together with the Customs Department, must continue their active work with their customers, employees and municipalities in order to strengthen cooperation and dialogue.
Modernisation of mail and parcel distribution, combined with growing parcel flows, became another challenging task for the company: as of 1 March the company applies fully automated and centralised mail distribution. The launch of the new systems allowed managing almost twice as many parcels. However, due to unforeseen circumstances, part of the parcels and mail reached the customers later than expected.
