BPO set to expand EMTS to grassroots level

Bangladesh Post Office (BPO) is set to expand its Electronic Money Transfer Service (EMTS) to door steps of people across the country with a view to recovering its lost glory, a high official said.

The official said expansion of the service would largely help the BPO compete with the private commercial banks (PCBs) and other operators.

According to him, the BPO in the meantime got go ahead from the ministry concerned and initially planned to expand the services to nearly 10,000 post offices across the country.

The office is also mulling to expand the services gradually to even a small grocery shop in rural areas through appointing agents aiming to make the service more accessible and customer- friendly.

"Mass expansion of EMTS to grassroots level is underway through which BPO expects to regain its lost glory soon," deputy post master general (DPMG) of BPO, Jakir Hasan Anu told the FE Thursday.

"We have received go-ahead from the ministry concerned to appoint our agents across the country. Some proposals are under our scrutiny. We hope after appointing agents, EMTS would revolutionise the country's financial transaction system once again," he added.

"If everything goes accordingly, we are hopeful to start our new venture at the end of the current calendar year (2014)," the DPMG expressing his hope said.

However, the once popular EMTS service of the BPO is gradually losing its market share for the last couple of years in the face of rapid expansion of various mobile money transfer services by PCBs and other operators.

EMTS expanded swiftly across the country until 2012 due to its easy procedure and lower service charges.

Around 3.3 million transactions were made through the service in 2011, and the number almost tripled in 2012.

But EMTS faced a serious setback in the year 2013, as the number of transactions dropped by nearly 65 per cent in the year after arrival of a number of private operators in the market.

According to BPO data, earnings from EMTS also declined drastically to nearly Tk 171 million during January-December period of 2013 against Tk 361 million a year ago.

During January-April period of 2014 transaction of EMTS of BPO dropped to Tk 3.14 billion against Tk 6.49 billion in the corresponding period.

The money transfer service is losing its market share to the private operators mainly due to its insufficient number of service points; lack of required publicity and above all bureaucratic tangles, another high official of BPO said preferring anonymity.

"Private Banks and other operators have recently extended similar service to even small grocery shops throughout the country, which we could not. Mainly this limitation has hit our profit hard," the BPO official added.

According to him, BPO has introduced EMTS only to its 2,700 offices out of nearly 10,000 across the country till its inception, whereas the private banks are rapidly expanding their services everyday.

"People nowadays are not interested to go to a distant post office to receive money as they are getting the same service at their doorsteps through other operators."

But transfer of large amount of money through EMTS has increased recently due to security reasons."

"In most cases, we observe that people bother little about security of their transactions involving small amount of money."

But in case of large amount transactions, BPO is still on top of their choice," the BPO official informed.

According to BPO data, the transaction of large volume of amount through EMTS stood at Tk 2.1 billion during July-May period of the current financial year against less than Tk1.97 billion in the corresponding period.

However, according to the Bangladesh Bank (BB) data, the amount of daily transactions through the private banks' mobile money transfer services has reached nearly Tk 10 million.

Twenty seven private banks have taken permission from the central bank to operate the service, and some more are on the pipeline. Of the banks, seventeen have already started their operations.