The State Commission for the Protection of Competition, taking into account the great public interest in the sector, has studied the sector of providing online taxis through electronic platforms, recorded the problems and presented proposals.

Iravaban.net spoke with Mr. Hakob Manukyan, the Chief Specialist of the Division of Policy Development and Methodology of the Commission for the Protection of Competition. He noted that the Commission has a separate authority to conduct field studies, and every year they choose five socially important markets. This year, one of those studies was conducted on online taxis.

The commission also observed the activities of traditional taxis and noted that more than 88 percent of the more than 3,000 registered companies have not carried out any activity in the last 5 years. The taxes paid by the remaining 200 businessmen who have expanded their activities have also significantly decreased. “Based on this we can conclude that online taxis have replaced the traditional ones.”

“The trend of digitization, both in the world and in Armenia, has led to the fact that with the availability of Internet connection and telephone, it has become more convenient to order a taxi through a telephone application than to use traditional taxis,” Hakob Manukyan noted.

The specialist noted that the idea of ​​electronic platforms was fixed in the Tax and Civil Codes until 2023, which, however, did not lead to the regulation of the sector. “In 2023, the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure developed a legislative package, based on which changes were made. But we also see risks in these changes. For example, there are no regulations related to the quality of passenger transport, control of platforms. This blog remains open.”

In response to our question: why do most online taxis not have the TAXI logo, Manukyan answered that the requirement for the logo, the minimum price to be placed on the outside of the vehicle applies only to traditional taxis. “From this we assume that there are unequal competitive conditions, when in the case of electronic taxis there are no such requirements as in the case of traditional taxis.”

Speaking about the privacy policy, our interlocutor noted that it contains provisions according to which the platform can use the information collected by consumers in a wide range of cases.

Details in the video.