News

The Spanish Post (Correos de España) and its Moroccan counterpart (Poste Maroc) signed a reciprocal agreement to set up an electronic money transfer service. This comes in the wake of a similar agreement signed by the Chilean, Spanish and Uruguayan Posts last week (see UPU News, 28 July 2008).



José Damián SANTIAGO MARTÍN, CEO of Correos de España, and Anass ALAMI, Director General of Poste Maroc, announced that a service was being launched between the two countries, at a brief ceremony during the 24th Universal Postal Congress.



This service will be available at about 1,000 post offices in Morocco and 2,300 in Spain.



Around half a million Moroccan nationals live in Spain, and in 2007, it is believed that Moroccans living in Europe sent around 4.8 billion EUR back to their country of origin. That figure was bound to rise considerably over the coming years, said Poste Maroc's Director General, adding that he was very happy to be signing the agreement with Spain.



Meanwhile, the postal leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Qatar, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen also signed an agreement that will see them start exchanging money transfers electronically.



As with other regional projects, the money transfer service relies on the UPU's IFS application and international financial network.



Launched by the Arab League and implemented by a regional steering committee chaired by Emirates Post, the project, also supported by the French Post, will allow the postal operators involved to exchange money orders on a multilateral basis from now on.



The new service furthers the UPU's efforts, which are suported by UNI Post & Logistics Global Uinon, to improve access to secure and reliable money transfer services through formal channels for rural populations, and especially for migrant workers.



This is an important move for the region as for example more than 80% of the United Arab Emirates population of 5.8 million people consists of foreigners. Other Arab countries said they would join the regional network by the end of this year.



A similar regional project is expected to start next week with countries from North Eastern Africa.