posted on November 15, 2011 06:31:46 PM
The U.S. Postal Service said it ended another fiscal year with billions of dollars in losses, an expected announcement that continued to illustrate the agency's shaky financial picture.
The Postal Service said it lost $5.1 billion through Sept. 30 and that the loss would have hit $10.6 billion without recent legislation allowing it to delay a required annual $5.5 billion payment into a fund for future retiree health benefits. But the payment postponed by Congress is now due by Nov. 18, and the agency repeated that it could run out of cash by the end of fiscal 2012 without congressional action.
The Postal Service is an independent government agency whose operating budget isn't funded by taxpayers, other than a subsidy to serve overseas voters and the disabled.
Postal Service heads said the agency could regain its financial footing by cutting annual costs by $20 billion by the end of 2015. The service "can become profitable again if Congress passes comprehensive legislation to provide us with a more flexible business model so we can respond better to a changing marketplace," Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said in a statement.
Lawmakers are weighing legislation that could let the postal service close more branches, drop Saturday delivery, venture into non-mail businesses and be relieved of certain retiree health costs.
Revenue was $65.7 billion for the latest fiscal year, down from $67.1 billion the year before.
Total mail volumes fell by three billion pieces, or 1.7%, from 2010. First-class mail, the agency's most profitable product, continued its steady decline as consumers continued to pay bills online and communicate digitally. The postal service lost more than $8 billion in fiscal year 2010. It has already begun closing post offices and some 300 mail-sorting facilities
posted on November 15, 2011 06:50:27 PM
It would be interesting to see how Bestbuy fares this Xmas,last year it did well behaving as AMZN show room !
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