Senator Sherwin Gatchalian is urging the Philippine Competition Commission to impose stiffer penalties against the ride-hailing giant Grab Philippines for allegedly repeatedly violating competition rules since the departure of Uber in 2018.
He made the call after finding out that the PCC had penalized the Transport Network Company four times for breaching price and service quality promises in a span of more than a year, which for him was unacceptable.
After Grab acquired Uber’s Southeast Asia operations last year, the PCC fined Grab PH for violating key provisions of the Interim Measures Order during the merger review period of the antitrust authority.
Grab was penalized in October 2018 for its failure to maintain pre-merger conditions, such as pricing policies, rider incentives and service quality.
Citing more data from the PCC, the PCC fined Grab PH again in January 2019, and P6.5 million, for submitting “deficient, inconsistent and incorrect data” for the monitoring of its “compliance with its voluntary commitments.”
On Nov. 14, the regulator announced it had ordered Grab to return about ₱5.05 million in fares due to “overcharging” from customers who booked their services between February and May 2019. The PCC gave Grab 60 days to refund its customers.
On Dec. 19, the PCC imposed a fine of P14.15 million for Grab’s extraordinary deviation on its pricing commitment, and P2 million for exceeding driver cancellations at 7.76 percent instead of the committed 5 percent.
“PCC has seen many violations on Grab and even chided it for abuses committed on commuters so they were always imposed fines, Gathchalian said.
However, he said Grab had been fined for four times already in a matter of just one year.
“It would seem to appear that since they have been controlling a 93-percent share of the industry, pwede na nilang kontrolin ang merkado at ayos lang kahit na magmulta sila at lumabag sa itinakdang standards ng PCC, Gatchalian said.