Lifting Times: GeoPost Takes India Express

09 February 2009

GeoPost Takes India Express

From Flying Typers: Ezine of Air Cargo world 9^th Feb 2009

    A move that is certain to boost India's image as an atmosphere for investment, La Poste GeoPost Group, the express parcel arm of La Poste, has been cleared by the Indian government to buy into in express parcel delivery firm Continental Air Express.
     GeoPost now holds a 60 percent stake in the privately-held Indian company. The clearance has come, however, with a restriction:
     GeoPost will only deal in Business-to-Business express parcel deliveries with each parcel weighing more than two
kilograms.
     GeoPost's willingness to take a stake in the Indian company had been rejected a number of times by India and the permission came, according to senior officials in the Finance Ministry, came only after an intervention from the French Ambassador to India, Jérôme Bonnafont (right).
     The Ambassador wrote a letter to the then Finance Minister P. Chidambaram (left, he is now the Home Minister) asking him to personally intervene in the GeoPost case.
     The objections to the investment had come from the agency that looks at foreign investors, the Foreign Investment Promotion Board.
     The Board had been told by the Indian Department of Posts—which would face direct competition, if GeoPost was allowed to operate in the country that the action would go against international postal conventions if it came in to the country.
     Indeed, the rules are clear: any postal agency, which wants to operate in any country outside its own, must have an agreement with the postal operator of that country.
     GeoPost's stand, however, was equally clear.
     It said that its operations would not pose a challenge to India Post since it focused on the premium express parcel segment and did not deliver letters and postal parcels or express parcels weighing more than two kilos.
     GeoPost also pointed out that there were no objections to DHL India operations—a company owned by Germany's Deutsche Post.
     According to industry-watchers, the permission to GeoPost could trigger a change in the India Post Office Act.
     Apparently, one of the amendments to the act seeks to limit foreign investment in express and courier companies to 49 percent from the present 100 percent.
     Now all of that is changed.
Tirthankar Ghosh