KINIBIZ As the public transportation sector continues grappling with the presence of ridesharing services, one taxi operator has made an interesting suggestion - the Land Public Transport Commission (Spad) and the government should set higher fares for Uber, MyTeksi and GrabCar to even the playing field for taxis.

“If the fare is lower than that of the budget taxis’, it will ‘kill’ the taxi industry because passengers will choose their services,” Shamsubahrin Ismail, founder and adviser of Big Blue Capital (M) Sdn Bhd was quoted as saying by Bernama . “A fare hike is apt (for Uber, MyTeksi and Grabcar services) as these operators practise ridesharing compared to the budget taxis which impose fare on one passenger at a time.”

But there is one bit of problem with that idea - it may be illegal to force these services to charge higher fees than they currently are. Simply put, it may be anti-competitive and in breach of the Competition Act 2010.

(And before you jump in burning rage to point out the obvious, sometimes these services are already more expensive than taxis. Ridesharing is also not an available option as it’s something Uber is only trying out in its home city.)

Probably the most commonly looked at provision under the Act is Section 4, which prohibits cartels - any arrangement between businesses which, among others, is deemed to distort competition in the market for any goods or services. Think, say, two fish sellers who agree to charge a certain price so that they don’t have to fight for customers by seeing who can afford to sell fish cheaper.

Now this may not be directly applicable here because what is being proposed is not a cartel arrangement. Shamsubahrin is in effect asking for the authorities to force alternative services to charge higher fees - he is not asking these services to come to his office and discuss price fixing, which would be a cartel arrangement.

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This article was written by Khairie Hisyam.