You buy a stamp to mail a birthday card to your grandmother, not to fund a corporate growth strategy. Yet, postal services worldwide, including Hongkong Post, have spent the last decade acting like aggressive logistics startups rather than essential public utilities. It is a broken model. Mail delivery is a public service. When governments start treating letters and parcels as profit centers, everyday people pay the price through slashed delivery routes, rising postage rates, and neglected community branches.
Hongkong Post operates under a trading fund model. This financial structure demands that the department covers its own operating costs through commercial revenue. Sounds sensible on paper. In reality, it forces a public institution to compete directly with private courier giants while simultaneously carrying out a social mandate. You cannot chase profit margins while keeping universal service obligations cheap and accessible for remote villages and elderly residents. The math does not work.
The Trap of the Trading Fund Model
Let us look at how this plays out in practice. Private couriers pick and choose their delivery zones. They skip unprofitable rural routes and charge a premium for heavy packages. Hongkong Post doesn't have that luxury. Law mandates that they deliver to every single mailbox across the territory, whether it is a high-rise in Central or a village house on a distant outlying island.
When the trading fund model demands a surplus, management has to find revenue somewhere. They hike fees for basic mailing services. They commercialize counter space. They push workers to handle impossible volumes. You end up with a public service squeezed between two conflicting goals. It has to pay for itself while also serving the public good.
Let us be honest. Postal workers bear the brunt of this corporate identity crisis. Mail carriers walk long shifts in brutal humidity, burdened by heavier loads because management trims staffing to save money. The focus shifts from reliable community service to meeting strict internal performance metrics.
What Public Service Actually Means
A city like Hong Kong relies on an infrastructure that guarantees equal access for everyone. Mail delivery is part of that foundation, much like public healthcare, public transit, or public libraries. You do not expect the public library to turn a profit on every book loan. You do not demand that a public hospital run like a hedge fund.
So why do we expect the post office to pay its own way?
When a postal system prioritizes the bottom line, vulnerable populations suffer the most. Elderly residents who rely on physical mail for official notices, banking statements, and connection find themselves navigating automated systems and higher fees. Small local businesses trying to ship affordable goods face rising costs that squeeze their tiny profit margins.
Public subsidies are not wasted money. They are investments in social cohesion. Other global postal services receive direct government funding because lawmakers recognize that universal communication is a public good, not a retail business.
Fixing the Broken Delivery System
Fixing Hongkong Post requires a radical shift in mindset. First, the government needs to scrap the strict trading fund requirement that handcuffs postal leadership. Instead of forcing the department to generate its own surpluses, officials should treat postal operations as essential civic infrastructure funded through general tax revenue.
Second, postal leadership must pivot back to core competencies. Chasing trendy e-commerce logistics markets against entrenched private competitors drains resources. Hongkong Post should instead lean into secure government communications, digital authentication services, and reliable last-mile delivery for underserved neighborhoods.
Real reform means accepting that a post office might run at a financial deficit while delivering a massive social surplus. Communities thrive when basic services are dependable, affordable, and universal. It is time to stop treating mail delivery like a corporate balance sheet and start treating it like a public lifeline. Check your local post box tomorrow and ask yourself if it looks like a community asset or a corporate storefront. The answer tells you everything you need to know about where our priorities currently stand.
