Government should ensure level playing field

“TAXIS cannot compete with e-hailing services and therefore the government has to stop them,” say taxi drivers and taxi companies in Malaysia. It is true that taxis are unable to compete with e-hailing service providers. But the solution is not to stop e-hailing services but to provide taxi drivers with the ability to compete with such services.

A crucial step in this is to ensure that e-hailing service providers do not abuse their currently dominant position, defined by the Competi-tion Act 2010 as “a situation in which one or more enterprises possess such significant power in a market to adjust prices or outputs or trading terms, without effective constraint from competitors or potential competitors”. With Uber exiting the Malaysian e-hailing industry in return for shareholding in Grab, Grab arguably has become the dominant e-hailing company in Malaysia. The Malaysia Competition Commission should investigate Grab’s current practices and continuously monitor the company to ensure that it competes fairly.