E-hailing - Spad to look into ways to break up monopolies

The government will not allow any monopolies in the transport sector including for e-hailing services, said Transport Minister Anthony Loke today.

He said towards this, he has instructed the Land Public Transport Commission (Spad) to undertake a comprehensive study on taxi and e-hailing services and come up with proposals within a month.

This will include finding ways to break-up monopolies.

“We will not allow any monopolies by any company, including those in e-hailing. What we want is that the interests of the public be taken care of.

“We will look for a balancing point of how to regulate the industry and how to give better services to the public,” he said when asked about public concerns that taxi and e-hailing services would be monopolised by Grab, the dominant player in local e-hailing services.

He said he hopes to announce new policies regarding taxi and e-hailing services by July.

Uber Technologies and its rival Grab had been the two main players in Malaysia’s e-hailing services sector.

However, Grab took a dominant position in the market after Uber sold its Southeast Asia operations to Grab in March in exchange for a stake in the company. -Mkini