On October 7 (Central European Time), the Universal Postal Union (UPU) released its 2022 Postal Development Report at the World Post Day ceremony in Berne, Switzerland. China, Austria, France, Germany, Japan and Switzerland stood out reaching Postal Development Level 10 (PDL10) according to their scores in the Integrated Index for Postal Development (2IPD). Director General Masahiko Metoki of the UPU International Bureau awarded letters of commendation to these countries.

According to the UPU, PDL10 represents the highest level of postal excellence among the peer groups. Giving full play to the power of their postal business models, the designated operators of the above six countries have achieved the highest level in postal excellence, provided best-in-class postal services in the world, and contributed substantially to their countries’ overall economic growth and social inclusion.

According to the 2IPD scores, China ranked first in the Asia-Pacific region. Cameroon, Saudi Arabia, Estonia, Switzerland and Colombia respectively topped the regions of Africa, Arab, Europe and CIS (the Commonwealth of Independent States), industrialized countries, and Latin America and Caribbean.

2IPD is a composite index providing an overview of postal development around the world with postal big data, official UPU statistics and key UPU surveys. It provides reference for governments to develop strategies, regulators to better identify the challenges faced by postal services, and postal operators to examine their relevant operational and business models. This composite index offers a benchmark performance score (from 0 to 100) along four dimensions of postal development: reliability, reach, relevance and resilience, which are used to assess the development of quality of service from a speed and predictability perspective, evaluate the level of postal connectivity of the country with the rest of the world from an outbound perspective, measure the relative success of different postal business models and activities from a demand perspective, and estimate the postal capacity to overcome economic, social, technology and environmental shocks in a sustainable way.