The Ministry of Transport has proposed a new regulation on taxi management in which Grab Car is not listed as a local taxi service but e-contracted passenger transportation.

The ministry has submitted a revised draft to replace Resolution 86 on business and conditions for automobile transportation. The revised resolution hasn't been welcomed by the taxi associations though. Nguyen Cong Hung, head of Hanoi Taxi Association, said Grab Car should be considered a taxi service and must follow all the rules such as installing taxi signs to differentiate them from other cars.

The ministry disagreed with taxi associations' proposal to consider all transportation services with cars that have less than nine seats to be taxi service. According to the ministry, a taxi firm must install the taxi signs for their cars and can use both traditional meter clock or pre-determined prices with an online app or both. Uber and Grab are classified as contracted cars and the information about their contracts must be sent to the local Department of Transport.

In order to maintain a fair market, the ministry said taxi cars must have less than nine seats and an expiry date of 12 years. 

Meanwhile, only firms or co-operatives with business licenses are allowed to operate with cars that have less than nine seats. 

The cars must also have an expiry date of 12 years and firms and co-operatives are banned from modifying larger cars for business. 

This is also aimed to deal with various complaints about unfairness after two years piloting the e-contracted passenger transportation for the regular taxi service and the e-contracted passenger transportation have a similar operating model.

The ministry also proposed the prime minister new regulations about management responsibilities of individuals and agencies as well as plans to encourage more firms to use high technology in transportation to save cost.

A total of 866 transportation firms with more than 36,000 vehicles have participated in the pilot project of applying science and technology to support management and connect passenger services of contracted cars in the last two years. 

There are 506 firms, three software providers and 21,600 vehicles in HCM City. Hanoi has 354 firms, seven software providers and over 15,000 vehicles.

VOV/Dtinews