PT Pos Indonesia Reluctant To Participate In The 'Free Ongkir' Trend, Why?

Director of Operations and Digital Services of PT Pos Indonesia Hariadi. (Photo: Mery Handayani/VOI)

PT Pos Indonesia emphasized that it will not participate in free or free shipping programs (postage) such as those run by other similar companies in e-commerce or marketplace platform services.

Director of Operations and Digital Services of PT Pos Indonesia Hariadi said the ecosystem formed by the e-commerce platform was not in line with the principles adopted by PT Pos Indonesia.

"Actually, this is an old issue, which is called free shipping and all kinds of things are actually charged to logistics companies and also to sellers for facilitation," he said when met in Sarinah, Jakarta, Wednesday, October 2.

Hariadi said that logistics companies that participate in the e-commerce ecosystem are generally new corporations that are still seeking valuation through exemption from shipping costs to consumers.

Meanwhile, continued Hariadi, PT Pos Indonesia as a state-owned company is no longer looking for valuation. Therefore, he said, PT Pos Indonesia could not follow the pattern played by the e-commerce platform.

"At that time we transformed, but there is a way of playing that PT Pos cannot follow this pattern, especially there is a large marketplace that has a bargaining power to find the best that will be obtained," he said.

According to Hariadi, even though he did not participate in the ecosystem, PT Pos Indonesia could still grow with the transformation carried out. Especially through the process of digitizing services.

"So far, even though we don't follow games like that, we still grow in the marketplace, we are still growing and we hope that in the future this industry will be much better. Because we know for ourselves that startup sustainability is a sign of asking whether such practices (free shipping) will be carried out continuously," he said.

Hariadi admitted that currently PT Pos Indonesia's market share in domestic goods delivery services is only at the level of 3.5 to 4 percent with a volume of 300,000 to 400,000 packages per day.

Even so, Hariadi assessed that free shipping services are a limited feature because there are risks regarding sustainability. Therefore, he said, PT Pos Indonesia chose not to take advantage of the ecosystem formed by the e-commerce platform.

"With the risk of sustainability, we already know that some couriers have also started to collapse, right. Ladies and gentlemen, you can see it in the media, which used to be the anchor of a marketplace ecosystem, suddenly resigned," he said.