“We can’t do much better than that,” he said.

He added that Maltapost was striving to reach better levels of service. “Before, the industry had been stable for decades. All over the world, mail companies were huge monolithic-type companies.

“But we had to wake up and smell the coffee,” he said.

The mail business was on the decline. “We estimate that our haulage is 25 per cent lower than last year.

“We know it, we must fight to make a profit, because ultimately it will be the tax-payer who has to make up the shortfall,” he said. In today’s technological age, people prefer to send an email or an SMS to convey an instantaneous message, rather than use the mail.

He said the mail business was no longer stable.

“We must be more flexible and we must adjust to the fluctuating market and declining business. Eventually, we will have to liberalise this market,” he said.

He also said that Maltapost had to downsize.

“In 2001 we had 841 employees. Five foreign companies looked into our work practices and said that the company was over-staffed by about 30 per cent. “We now have 628 employees and we have radically reformed the way we work. Our central mail room and hubs work very similarly to those in the UK, for example, and we have a better delivery rate than the UK and Ireland.”

Mr Sultana pointed out that the government still owned 65 per cent of Maltapost’s shares, with its foreign partner, New Zealand Post, owning the remainder.

Outgoing chairman Joe Grioli, who steps down at the beginning of December, said that a lot of planning and testing was done before the restructuring exercise was carried out and said that results were obvious.

“Maltapost has improved tremendously. But people need to understand that while we are in full control of local mail, when it is coming from abroad or once it leaves Malta, everything is beyond our control,” he said.

Mr Grioli mentioned a case where a bag of mail destined for Malta was mislaid at Heathrow. “What can we do about that?” he asked.

Mr Grioli appealed for people to send their Christmas mail as soon as possible in order to avoid a situation such as last year’s, where 2.1 million items were posted just one week before Christmas.

He thanked the Maltapost staff and wished them well for the future.