STAMP DAY- 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ESTABLISHMENT OF CROATIAN POST

Motif: machine cancellation With this year postage stamp series a «Postage Stamp Day» the Croatian Post Inc. marks the 10th anniversary of its founding and independence as a separate shareholders company competitive on the market, creating its own autonomous business prospects. The key to a new path is the Act on the Separation of Croatian Post and Croatian Telecommunications into Croatian Post and Croatian Telecom, adopted by the Parliament of Croatia on July 10, 1998. Provisions of the mentioned Act present a key document on establishing the present Croatian Post Inc. and January 1, 1999 is considered as a founding date of a company. Croatian Post as an organisation and in reference to the activity performance has a rich history of transformation from a simple classic messenger service with military organisation, a private concessionaire in the post and a public operator within the legal state apparatus, a company of a special social interest within public companies up to the contemporary, market oriented commercial company. For generations Post has always been and will remain welcomed and highly trusted part of any community, a sensitive «barometer» which intermediary proper activity and organisation identifies different forms of societies reflected in cultural, economic, political and human events. It is also a particular diary of all the historical and other phenomena from the oldest human civilisations up to the present day, and it can justly be said that postal activity exists from the dawn of the civilisation. Thus Croatian Post is a faithful reflection of the development of postal services on the Croatian territory, successfully transformed into higher organisational forms in line with the development of production forces in the society. The crucial role of postal activities and postal traffic is dissemination of information; the activity unchanged in all the phases of development of social societies and civilisations. In the course of history postal delivery services have been organized for mail and for travellers (cursus publicus in the Roman Empire and later a horse drawn carriages); nevertheless the bottom line was always transport of mail. A post as an organisational form always differed from other forms of social economy and management, its final goal was always a general interest, and post enjoyed a privileged status of providing reserved postal services as the concessionaire service provider or a private subsidised company. Croatian Post even today, with contemporary economic activity retained some basic attributes of its function and its position in reference to the clients, visible first of all in uninterrupted and continuous functioning, general accessibility, reliability, security and providing services to the clients expeditiously. Exactly due to the mentioned attributes and a long and rich historical development, Croatian Post still today enjoys considerable business reputation and enormous confidence of its clients. A threshold of a new phase in history of post is certainly postal reform taking place in the middle of the 19th century when a new economic and social relation triggered a process of establishing new and different channels for postal traffic operations in order to bring it in line with the requirements of a new era. Following mere timeline traces makes only logical creation of a new climate in the form of new economic and technological achievements, market liberalisation and privatisation at the end of the 20th century which as a result created conditions for separating formerly coherent body of post, telegraph and telephone into two recognised companies Post and Telecommunications. Subsequent events unfolding in Europe and new organisational reforms made it possible for the Croatian Post in 1999 to be separated from telecommunications and pursue its own path as an independent shareholders company with the goal of remaking its proper business operations and technological processes. That makes a current issue of a postage stamp, marking the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the Croatian Post Inc. an important event since the Croatian Post has been going through a new organizational reform with the goal of joining the contemporary streams in international business and evolve into a recognised company, competitive on contemporary market, observing demands and economic laws of industrialized society.