Nepal Post: Department of Postal Service — History, Network, Services

Nepal's public postal system — popularly called Nepal Post or hulak sewa — is operated by the Department of Postal Service (हुलाक सेवा विभाग, Hulak Sewa Bibhag), a government department under the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MoCIT). The department sets postal policy and rates, manages the nationwide office network, issues postage stamps and represents Nepal in international postal bodies. It is one of the oldest continuously operating government service organisations in the country.

Day-to-day operations in the capital are anchored by the General Post Office (गोश्वारा हुलाक कार्यालय, Goshwara Hulak Karyalaya), which now operates from Dillibazar in Kathmandu after relocating from its long-time home at Sundhara. Other central units in Kathmandu include the Central Money Order Office (Kendriya Dhanadesh Karyalaya), the office responsible for philatelic and postage-stamp management, and a Postal Training Centre that trains postal staff.

The legal foundation of the service is the Postal Act, 2019 BS (1963 AD), supplemented by the Postal Regulation, 2020 BS and the Additional Postal Regulation, 2034 BS. The Act gives the Government of Nepal the exclusive right to convey letters within the country, while also allowing it to license private operators under prescribed conditions — the legal basis on which today's private courier companies function alongside the state network.

Organised mail carriage in Nepal predates the modern service: official dispatches were relayed by horse and by foot-runners between administrative centres from at least the era of Prithvi Narayan Shah in the 18th century. The modern postal service, however, dates to 1878 AD (1935 BS), when Rana Prime Minister Ranodip Singh established the country's first post office, named Nepal Hulak Ghar, in Kathmandu. Within a few years the network had spread to dozens of offices across the country.

Nepal issued its first postage stamps in April 1881 (1938 BS) — a set of three values of one anna, two annas and four annas, inscribed in Nepali script in the name of the Gorkha government and bearing the design of the royal crown (sripech) above crossed khukuris. The first printings were made on European paper with a press imported from England; later printings used hand-made Nepali paper and continued until 1907, when a new definitive series depicting the deity Pashupati, printed by the British firm Perkins Bacon, replaced them.

Nepal joined the Universal Postal Union (UPU) on 11 October 1956 (2013 BS), at the UPU's Ottawa Congress, formally connecting hulak sewa to the worldwide postal network. Nepal is also a member of the Asian-Pacific Postal Union (APPU), the regional restricted union of the UPU, through which it cooperates with postal operators across Asia and the Pacific on training, quality of service and express mail.

According to the Department of Postal Service, postal services are currently delivered through roughly 4,000 offices nationwide, staffed by around 17,000 employees — one of the largest and farthest-reaching networks in the entire government machinery. The network is organised in tiers: the department and central offices in Kathmandu at the top, postal directorates supervising the provinces, district post offices in the districts, and local post offices below them.

Six postal directorates — located in Morang, Dhanusha, Kaski, Dang, Surkhet and Kailali — oversee operations across the provinces, while the central offices in Kathmandu, including the General Post Office, serve the capital region directly. Beneath the directorates sit 70 district post offices (jilla hulak karyalaya) and 676 post offices located at municipal and rural-municipal (local government) level. A further 3,074 small 'additional post offices' (atirikta hulak karyalaya) — minimal rural counters historically run by part-time staff — remain on the books but are officially in the process of being phased out as the network is restructured for the federal era.

Mail moves between these tiers along designated mail routes connecting district offices with local offices, a system whose origins are visible in the Hulaki Rajmarg ('Postal Highway'), the historic east–west road network across the Tarai along which runners once carried the mails. Older organograms of the department also listed regional directorates and ilaka (area) post offices; the current province-based structure replaced these after Nepal's transition to federalism.

The core business of Nepal Post remains letter mail. Ordinary (unregistered) mail is accepted at every tier of the network for domestic and international delivery at rates fixed by the department. Registered mail (rajistari) adds a receipt, a unique registration number and proof of delivery, and is the standard channel for legal notices, official correspondence, academic certificates and other documents where evidence of posting matters — courts and government offices in Nepal still rely on it heavily.

For time-sensitive items, Nepal Post operates EMS (Express Mail Service), the UPU-standard international express product, alongside domestic express delivery. EMS items are barcoded and trackable, and Nepal Post is listed as the country's designated EMS operator in the UPU's EMS Cooperative. Parcel post is available both domestically and internationally, handling packages that exceed letter-mail limits, with customs handling for inbound foreign parcels at exchange offices in Kathmandu.

Supporting services round out the mail catalogue: rentable post office boxes at major offices, registration and concessionary circulation of newspapers and magazines, an online tracking system for domestic and international items on the department's website, and mobile postal service initiatives intended to extend collection and delivery toward all 753 local levels of federal Nepal.

Long before commercial banks reached rural Nepal, the post office was many households' only formal financial channel. The money order (dhanadesh) service lets customers remit money between post offices — both domestically and, through international arrangements, to and from selected foreign postal operators. The Central Money Order Office in Kathmandu coordinates the service, which historically carried pensions, remittances and family support payments into hill and Tarai districts alike.

The Postal Savings Bank (Hulak Bachat Bank) was introduced in 2033 BS (1976 AD) to bring basic savings services to areas without banks. Operated through designated district and area post offices rather than as a separate corporation, it offers simple deposit accounts backed by the government. By the mid-2010s around 117 post offices were authorised to run savings-bank counters, of which about 65 were reported active in 2016, holding more than 72,000 accounts and deposits exceeding NPR 2.19 billion; a small number of offices have since been permitted to invest their collected deposits to earn returns.

These figures illustrate both the reach and the challenge of postal finance in Nepal: the infrastructure exists nationwide, but competition from commercial banks, microfinance institutions and digital wallets has eroded its customer base. Reform proposals have repeatedly suggested modernising the savings bank and money-order services into a digital remittance and payments platform riding on the post office network.

Stamp issuance is one of the department's statutory functions, and Nepali stamps are internationally prized by collectors — particularly the classic 1881–1907 issues printed on local paper. From the first three-value set of April 1881 to the present, Nepal has issued well over a thousand distinct stamps; by 2020 the cumulative count stood at roughly 1,367 different issues, spanning definitives, commemoratives celebrating national figures, wildlife, mountains and heritage sites, and joint or thematic issues.

Philatelic services are handled by the department's dedicated philatelic and postage stamp management office in Kathmandu, which plans the annual stamp programme, manages stamp stocks for the whole network and sells new issues, first day covers and collector packs through philatelic counters at the General Post Office and major district offices. Annual stamp programmes are announced through the department, and new issues are typically released on significant national anniversaries.

For collectors and researchers, the classic-era stamps also serve as primary documents of Nepali history: the 1881 crown-and-khukuri series was inscribed for the Gorkha kingdom, while the 1907 Pashupati series marked Nepal's first outsourced, modern-printed definitives. The philatelic bureau's sales today provide a modest but symbolically important revenue line for hulak sewa.

Like postal operators worldwide, Nepal Post has seen its traditional letter business collapse with the spread of mobile phones and the internet. Mail turnover was reported at just over 39 million items in 2017 — down about 5 percent from the previous year and 16 percent from 2015 — and the service was reported to be running an annual loss of around NPR 2.4 billion in 2017. Public perception of slow delivery and staff morale problems have compounded the decline, even as e-commerce has created new demand for reliable last-mile delivery.

The government's response has been restructuring and legal reform. The 3,074 additional post offices are being wound down, staffing is being rationalised, and successive task forces have recommended slimming the bureaucracy and converting Nepal Post into an autonomous corporation. A replacement for the six-decade-old Postal Act — designed to fit the federal structure and permit commercial flexibility — has been under discussion in parliament for several years.

Modernisation efforts already visible include barcoded EMS tracking, online tracking on nepalpost.gov.np, digitised counters at major offices and pilot mobile postal services. Because this page is the hub for Nepal's postal topics, readers can also explore related subjects — postal codes of Nepal, EMS rates and tracking, and the history of Nepali stamps — as separate detailed guides. Figures on losses, mail volumes and office counts change with each fiscal year; the numbers above carry the dates of their official or press reporting.