Royal Mail chief scoops £371,000 bonus weeks after large stamps increase First class and second class stamps increased on Monday April 30 - first class from 46p to 60p, and second class from 36p to 50p - the biggest in years. Ms Greene also refused to rule out further steep increases in the price of stamps, insisting that she was "not going to speculate on price increases." She added: "We had some of the lowest prices in Europe. Even with the price increase that we have seen in the second class stamp at 50p we are the lowest or second lowest depending on the weight category. The framework for Mrs gr The core postal business, which delivers the six-days-a-week to 29 million addresses, made a profit of £3 million, up from a loss of £120 million last year. However the figures showed further declines in the number of letters being posted, and Mrs Greene indicated that this could lead to further job losses. Royal Mail is now forecasting a five per cent fall every year for the next five years, after declines of between four and six per cent over the previous five years. Ms Greene said it was "a matter of concern both here and around the world to see that core envelopes business decline. It's a worry. She said the scale of the increases in stamped mail had not accelerated the decline, because stamped mail only accounts for a fraction of all letters and parcels sent. Mrs Greene said: "In those first months our models are holding up to where we thought they would be. We are about the same. We are basically on track. Royal Mail gave the clearest indication yet that the business is likely to be sold off, most probably in the early part of 2014. Last year Royal Mail laid off 4,000 staff in a redundancy programme that cost £77million. Mrs Greene signalled more losses were likely. She said: "I have always said that in a business that is experiencing structural decline you are likely to see fewer people working in that business." An increase in people shopping over the internet meant that Royal Mail was better placed to benefit from the growth in this market. The group's European parcels business GLS and the Post Office business accounted for 89 per cent of the profits after modernisation costs. Royal Mail added it was now a "going concern" after the Government took on its pension liabilities under moves to part-privatise the business.