On 9 October, the Universal Postal Union (UPU) held a series of events commemorating its 145th anniversary at its headquarters in Berne, Switzerland. The ceremony also released the 2019 ranking ofthe Integrated Index for Postal Development, or 2IPD.According to the ranking, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany took the top three places. Taking the place of Singapore Post,China Post became the champion in the Asia-Pacific region for the first time, ranking the 15th among the postal operators worldwide.

The UPU unifies postal operators from different countries and regions into a single postal territory. Today the territory covers 192 member countries and regions, with 668,445 post offices, 5.26 million staff members and numerous physical infrastructures in the world playing an important role in promoting socio-economic development. In order to assess the level of postal development in a countryor region, the UPU created the Integrated Index for Postal Development, or 2IPD,using abundant big data to benchmark the performance of the global postal network along four dimensions: reliability, reach, relevance and resilience.

The 2IPDranking in 2019 covers 172 countries and regions, with a worldwide average score of 35 (37.24 in 2018). Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, Japan and France rank the top five places. These countries have achieved a high level of performance thanks to a strong showing across the four areas of postal development. However, the development gaps within and between regionsare increasingly widening. Industrialized countries received the highest average score (68.9), followed by Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (49.8), Asia-Pacific (29.5), Arab region (27.29), Latin America and the Caribbean (22.7), and Africa (20.6).