PCC slaps P6.5-M fine on Grab PH
Credit to Author: LISBET K. ESMAEL| Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2019 16:21:33 +0000
The country’s anti-trust watchdog on Friday fined Grab Philippines anew for failing to fulfill pledges related to its purchase of rival ride-hailing firm Uber.
The P6.5-million penalty adds to the P16 million the Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) told both firms to pay last year over violations committed while the deal was being reviewed.
PCC Chairman Arnesio M. Balisacan told reporters that Grab had filed “deficient, inconsistent and incorrect data for the monitoring of its compliance with its voluntary commitments.”
While the PCC cleared Grab and Uber’s controversial merger in August 2018, it vowed to keep a close eye on Grab for a year.
Grab had submitted a list of voluntary commitments, which included regular submission of pricing and other data, in response to PCC’s statement of concern regarding higers fares and cancellations following the shutdown of Uber’s operation in April.
“However, the Commission cannot effectively enforce these commitments without the submission of correct, sufficient, consistent, and timely data by Grab,” Balisacan said.
“We remain steadfast in binding Grab to its commitments, as these are meant to address the concerns of market competition and the ride-hailing public,” he added.
The decision to impose the P6.5-million fine followed the conclusion of the Aug. 10-Nov. 20, 2018 monitoring period, PCC Commissioner Amabelle Asuncion said.
Grab Philippines President Brian Cu, in a statement, said the firm would be appealing the penalty.
“PCC required us to submit our post-transaction data and given the nature and the huge volume of data that we need to extract and prepare, Grab was working under very limited timelines to meet PCC’s deadline,” he noted.
“During the Voluntary Commitment negotiations, Grab recommended various ways to present the requested data based on how the system can best provide them. Given enough time, we can reconcile our data structure with theirs,” Cu added.
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