The government mentioned that it will liberalise basic mail services in Singapore this April. SingPost's share price subsequently fell.

I think that this move is no threat to SingPost.

My reasons:

First, SingPost is and has been the one and only postal service in Singapore for 15 years.

To quote what UBS Investment Research said in the Business Times article on the 6 February, 'it would be impossible for new players to compete heads-on with SingPost or engage in severe price competition' because it has access to all local letterboxes.

Second, Singapore is just so small and we do not need any other mail services. Singapore is merely a little red dot on the map compared to other countries where two or more postal services would make sense.

Take the number of telcos in Singapore for example. If the three telcos did not have other investments besides dealing in mobile lines, then they would not have survived this far. If they had only concentrated in mobile lines and competed against each other, then it would be good for us as consumers, but bad for business.

In this case, liberalisation in the basic mail services will not affect SingPost's performance---at least not yet. If competition is going to occur, then it would probably work if their focus is on overseas mail or better services to challenge vPOST, Vbox and JAMES but not based on the basic mail services alone. It's just ridiculous.

To add on, the Infocomm Development Authority says that SingPost is still a public postal licensee and will still be printing our local stamps and manage the postal code system. To ensure security, SingPost will still hold the letterbox's masterdoor keys.

Now, who wants to play Monopoly?


Nurwidya Abdul