Economy 1 July 2024, 1:25pm

Hungarian Post raises prices for the second time this year

Portfolio

Magyar Posta (Hungarian Post), has published its tariffs in effect from today (1 July 2024), which show that letter and parcel delivery charges have both been raised. As in January, Portfolio has collected all the key changes in transparent tables. What seems to have gone under the radar in the local press is that parcel delivery tariffs were raised already on 1 March.

The state-owned company did not announce the price increases this time, but simply published its new tariffs, effective from 1 July 2024. If you find it, you find it. If not, well, you'll be surprised when sending a letter or a parcel.

If we compare this with the tariffs in force from 1 January, we see an increase of around 10% for most products.

Let's see some of the key changes and then the detailed tables:

the price of letters (priority and on-priority) have been raised by about 11% compared to the 1 January hike. Compared July 2022 they are now 60-63% higher and even compared to 1 September last year (when the raise was not carried out on 1 July) the tariffs are 21-22% higher;
we find largely the same price increases at identified letters, with a hike of some 11% over January this year;
the price of official documents has been raised by 10.3% over January, by over 21% compared to the start of last year and about 48% since 1 July 2022;
the basic fees of universal parcel service / MPL postal parcel service has been raised by 10% since January (or 1 Sept) and over 26% compared to 1 July 2022;
it now costs 43% more to send off a parcel from a terminal to another than it did on 1 January 2023 and 10% more than on 1 Sept last year;
the price of money orders were left on hold after a 15% yr/yr raise on 1 January 2024, as of which date they cost 43% than at the start of 2022.

As for parcels, the terminal-to-terminal cost was raised 30% to HUF 1,001 up to 2 kg on 1 September 2023 and the tariff was not changed on 1 January this year. However, the 10% hike came on 1 March rather than on 1 July. This means that the Post waited six months for a new tariff raise, and

the pattern suggests that we're in for another hike on 1 September.

Portfolio recently reported that postal prices have skyrocketed, rising by one and a half times inflation since 2020. Now, further price increases have been implemented.

For your convenience we have collected the key figures in tables and calculated the changes from one year to another (in some cases the Hungarian Post modified tariffs during the year, either in September or in July or in March). Enjoy!