An interview with Serrana Bassini, UPU Director General candidate
Mail & Express Review correspondent James Cartledge recently interviewed Serrana Bassini. Here is an excerpt of that interview.
"About Serrana Bassini
At next year's Universal Postal Union (UPU) meeting in Doha, Qatar, the 192 member countries will be selecting a new Director General to serve from January 2013 onwards. Current UPU chief Edouard Dayan, who has been in place since 2005, will be stepping down having reached his term limit.
After fifteen years rising through the ranks at Uruguayan Post, and a similar length of time in senior roles at the Postal Union of the Americas, Spain and Portugal (PUASP), Uruguay is putting forward Dr Serrana Bassini Casco as a candidate to take on the role of Director General of the UPU from 2013 to 2017...
Governments and regulators
In the new postal era, work must also be done to encourage national regulators around the world to open the doors for postal operators to run new services, and to build on their unique position in society and the trustworthiness of their brands.
It is something Bassini is already doing with PUASP, engaging with Latin American governments and regulators to allow new products and services to be offered by regulated posts. "In our region, we have a serious problem with regulation. In the majority of the countries, the market started out as liberalised and then later the governments started to regulate, but they did not care about the obligation of the universal service," she says. Through the PUASP, Bassini has been urging governments to open up regulation to allow new products and services, and to permit postal operators to grow beyond their traditional mail base...
Social development and the posts
Her message of inclusion for the UPU is perhaps reflective of a general attitude within Latin America at the moment that postal operators should be more than merely a communications service, they should be a positive force for change, driving social development.
Her message to governments within Latin America, through the PUASP, has been that opening up postal operators to provide additional services, for example financial services, can have a powerful effect on improving the quality of life for citizens."