The decline comes amid growing uptake of fixed Internet connection services for homes and offices currently offered by telcos.
This has made it easier for Kenyans to send and receive emails in place of traditional letters.
The PCK is also facing stiff competition from the growing number of private courier companies that have eaten into the State-owned postal agency’s business.
The number of letters sent locally in nine months to March 2019 fell by 21 percent to 37.8 million from a similar period last year, underlining the perilous state of the Postal Corporation of Kenya’s (PCK) future in the face of declining demand for its services.
Aggregated data sourced from the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) shows this was a fall from 48.1 million letters sent in nine months to March last year as Kenyans turn to private couriers and electronic messaging services that are faster and convenient.
The downward trend comes amid growing uptake of fixed Internet connection services for homes and offices currently offered by telcos, making it easier for Kenyans to send and receive emails in place of traditional letters.
As at the end of March this year, telcos had increased their fixed Internet connections to 402,103 marking a rise of 18 percent from a similar period in 2018.
The PCK is also facing stiff competition from the growing number of private courier companies that have eaten into the State-owned postal agency’s business.
Data from the Economic Survey 2019 indicates that while the number of post offices dropped from 623 in 2017 to 592 last year, the number of private courier outlets increased from 997 to 1027 in the same period.
The declining use of the postal services came to the fore in October 2017 when the PCK said it had about 50,000 idle letterboxes around the country, as people abandoned its once-thriving physical delivery of letters.
However, the State agency has not gone down without a fight and has on several occasions tried to re-invent itself over the years.
For instance, it launched premium stand-alone letterboxes located in upmarket areas including shopping malls and gated communities that were initially targeted at businesses, but the service was later provided to other postal users due to poor uptake.
It also piloted a bus passenger service dubbed Posta Liner in a bid to grow its revenues, which it later discontinued.
Posta is now anchoring its future on Kenya’s nascent e-commerce space, as it targeted a deal to become the logistics partner for US e-commerce giant Amazon and China’s Alibaba.
This comes amid a growing number of international parcels, which doubled from 14,000 in 2017 to 28,000 in 2018, a trend the Kenya Bureau of Statistics partly attributes to increased e-commerce activities. Posta also diversified its business into clearing and forwarding.
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