Ministerial Committee is expected to meet on Wednesday to approve Privatization of postal company

Three weeks late, the Privatization Ministerial Committee is expected to meet on Wednesday to approve the order of interests of the postal service - which will allow the privatization of the postal company to be promoted. The interests decree includes within it the powers that will be given to the state after the privatization of the post office, mainly in aspects of future ownership changes. The convening of the ministerial committee for privatization and the approval of the decree of interests are necessary steps toward the privatization of the post office.
About three weeks ago, the meeting of the committee was postponed due to the demand of Communications Minister Shlomo Karai to make changes to the decree of interests, so that any changes to the decree would be under the authority of the Communications Minister only and without the need for the approval of the Minister of Finance and another minister. Another difficulty in promoting privatization was due to the banks' fear of the consequences of the removal of the chairman, as a result of which post office CEO David Laron is also expected to resign. In light of the fear and risk of privatization, the banks announced the reduction of the post office's credit to promote the recovery.
The agreements to advance the interest decree were received as part of a meeting held at the beginning of the week between Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is in charge of the Companies Authority, Dodi Amsalem and Krei. Despite the impression created after the ministerial meeting, according to which the Ministry of Finance would agree to remove the chairman of the post office in exchange for promoting privatization, the actual picture is different. Since the Companies Authority left the hands of the Treasury and passed to Amsalem, the professional ranks in the ministry have no authority to influence the appointments. Thus, the position of the professional ranks Bautzer still supports keeping the chairman, but this position is merely a recommendation.
The privatization of the post office was promoted by all levels of the profession in the government, due to the many economic difficulties that the company had reached. In the last three years, the post office lost NIS 1.9 billion. Also, the state of the postal computing infrastructure and the level of service were very problematic. All of these led the state to launch a recovery program for the post office, in which 1.7 billion shekels were invested, with most of the money dedicated to the early retirement of employees. After the agreements were formed, the Ministry of Finance is promoting the transfer of the amount of 400 million shekels that will allow the retirement of 426 employees of the postal company and the removal of the chairman Vaaknin.
As part of the recovery plan, it was determined that about 1,000 employees, out of about 5,000 employees, would leave the post office. As of today, 729 employees have left, and now with the approval of the payment, 426 more employees are expected to leave.
In the letter sent today by the legal advisor of the Ministry of Finance, Assy Messing, he stated that the promotion of the interest order and the sale procedure are not related to the identity of the post chairman. In this way, according to him, it is possible to advance both the privatization procedure and the impeachment procedure at the same time. However, the letter was signed by Messing Commenting that although the procedures can take place at the same time, this has no effect on the position of the Ministry of Finance in relation to the impeachment procedure.
It is not impossible that at the end of the process, if Karai and Amsalem decide to complete the impeachment of the chairman, the matter will go to legal courts. Last week, attorney Roni Talmore from the Ministry of Justice sent a letter in which she stated that the ministry does not know of a precedent for the impeachment of an incumbent government company chairman. According to her, although there are regulations that allow the impeachment of a chairman, the use of this tool should be done very carefully and weighty arguments are required for this.
The opposition of the professional ranks in the Ministry of Finance and the Companies Authority poses a difficulty in the face of Minister Karai's arguments in favor of the impeachment. Karai's arguments were rejected one by one by the ranks of the profession and also in response to the hearing letter prior to the dismissal by Vaknin's lawyers. For example, despite Karai's claim that the service to the citizen has greatly deteriorated, during the term of the current chairman Mishal, the State Comptroller's report showed that in 2022 there was a 32% decrease in complaints about the mail compared to the corresponding period in 2021. Similarly, in response to the chairman's dismissal hearing, it was noted that the Ministry of Communications received 17% fewer complaints about the mail in the period between January and May 2023, compared to the corresponding period.
Another argument of Karai is that most of the Post's profit in the first quarter of the year was due to the increase in interest that benefited the Post Bank, and from regulatory changes that made some of the Post's operations profitable. To this claim, the director of the Companies Authority, Michal Rosenbaum, replied that the chairman implemented and integrated the new regulation in a good way.
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