Lost mail: Mexico's postal service looks to monopoly as a solution to its financial woes. (Spotlight).

You can't blame them for trying. The Mexican Postal Service (Sepomex) first began losing money in 1999, but by 2000, losses were reaching $200 million pesos a year, and $600 million pesos in 2001.

But now, the state-owned company is crying foul over what it calls "illegal competition"

from well-known private foreign and domestic courier companies. The massive influx of competition has been further exasperated by the increasing popularity of email. In the face of its imminent demise Sepomex, the Transport and Communications Secretariat has sent a controversial reform proposal to the Chamber of Deputies that has private courier companies barking mad. The proposal would consolidate Sepomex's position within the market and so assure its survival, that has companies like Multipack, DHL, Fedex and UPS barking mad.

The proposal calls for all packages or letters weighing 350 grams or less to be sent only through Sepomex, except where a private firm offers extra services, such as postal tracking, immediate delivery, or digital signatures, or where the company charges at least double Sepomex's price for the delivery. Sepomex says that under such a framework, they would increase its volume by 320 million items per year by 2004.

CONTRADICTIONS

Funnily enough, current regulations already dictate that any package that weighs less than 1 kilogram must be sent through Sepomex, although the law is rarely enforced and easily worked around. And so, the proposed 350-gram limit intends to offer authorities a more enforceable alternative.

Of course, anyone who has ever sent any correspondence through Mexico's post office can't help but feel that Sepomex has brought its problems upon itself. While things are beginning to improve, letters from international addresses still often take months to reach their Mexican destinations, and letters containing anything of value are unlikely to ever arrive at all.

The problem, apart from the corruption that leads to theft, which officials say is now harshly dealt with, is that Sepomex counts on outdated systems. A peak into any post office confirms the suspicion that employees far from rely on computers. As well, Sepomex, similar to many state companies, has more employees than it can pay.

Between 1995 and 2000, Sepomex cut 4,000 jobs, and this year another 1,000 jobs must go, but the question is whether reforms can actually come in time to save the company from complete collapse. But for now, that's for legislators to decide.