The Government is determined to turn around the Postal Corporation of Kenya and transform it into a modern entity capable of competing with other companies in the logistics and e-commerce space.
ICT and Digital Economy Cabinet Secretary Eliud Owalo said the government had identified five transformational pillars at the institution focusing on policy and regulatory environment, financial management, internal organization and governance, product and services, technology and innovation to revive and reposition the corporation.
The ministry, Mr Owalo said, would engage the corporation at the right levels, to work out the details.
“Interventions must be contemplated in the short-term, mid-term and long-term. As will be appropriate, some of the probable interventions may include reviewing financial management, solvency and debt portfolio and how best to manage cumulative liabilities that are anywhere around Sh 3 billion today,”
Mr Owalo said.
Mr Owalo said the corporation that was once literally the jewel in the government’s crown had fallen off the radar and had been left behind the technological advances of the past few decades.
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It had missed the opportunity to harness the benefits of the ongoing Fourth Industrial Revolution and leverage them for growth and wider relevance as a critical player in the communications sector and the wider national economy.
He was addressing the top leadership of the corporation led by the Board Chairman Mr Peter Kanaiya and departmental heads at the corporation’s head office in Nairobi. The minister, who was on a familiarization tour of the corporation was accompanied by Ms Esther Koimett, the Principal Secretary in the ministry and other senior ministry officials.
 Mr Owalo noted that some of the competition in the sector is from entities that are only a couple of decades old compared to the corporation that has been there for more than two centuries.
He said that for a long time, the corporation had basked in the glory of State protection and invincibility and even when the signs of change and danger began coming from outside, nothing was done to keep the corporation competitive.
As a result, the corporation has suffered stiff competition from the private sector, whilst contending with high costs of infrastructure yet expected to provide Universal Postal Services (UPS) to the country.
“The choice before us today is therefore between, on the one hand, continuing to look on as this sleeping giant moves from sleep towards atrophy, and MAYBE even death; or, conversely, to shake up, and wake up, the giant,”
He said the Kenya Kwanza Government, through the IC-DE Ministry, is determined to pull the corporation out of its present situation to take up its rightful place as a strategic State agency in the emerging and future competitive technological and business marketplace.