Russia plans postal reform that may help EBay speed up shipments

MOSCOW. December 19. KAZINFORM Russia plans to revamp the postal system next year to boost the country's $10 billion Internet commerce business and help companies including EBay Inc. (EBAY) and Ozon.ru to improve deliveries.
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The Telecommunications Ministry plans to submit a draft proposal to the Parliament in the first half of 2013, spokeswoman Ekaterina Osadchaya said by phone. The Russian Post should improve its distribution network for e-commerce, according to the ministry.

"The main problem with the Russian Post is its unpredictability," Vladimir Dolgov, head of EBay for Russia, said in an interview. "Sometimes it delivers in decent time, but there have been cases when deliveries from the U.S. took six to eight weeks."

Online stores have to spend tens of millions of dollars on transport infrastructure as they can't depend on regular service from the Russian Post, according to Ozon.ru, the country's largest Internet retailer. The state-run service has 42,000 branches to deliver goods across the world's largest country by territory.

Ozon, whose revenue rose 78 percent last year, has 2,000 parcel-collection points in Russia and Kazakhstan and operates its own courier service to deliver goods to customers' doors in large cities including Moscow and St. Petersburg, Kazinform refers to Bloomberg.

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