News, Ride Hailing

Philippines regulators forces Uber to stay in operation

The Philippines’ anti-trust agency has ordered that Uber to continue operations in the country even though Uber was meant to have shut down on the 8th of April given that Grab would be buying them out. The agency is reviewing the deal according to a report by Reuters.

“Uber’s compliance with our anti-trust counterpart in Singapore to extend the operation of its app indicates the feasibility of continuing its operations in the Philippines as well,” Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) chairman Arsenio Balisacan said in a statement to Reuters.

This brings the overall deal to be similar to that in Singapore where the government asked the shutdown to be delayed a week as well for anti-competition reviews to be conducted. The Philippines anti-trust agency requested that both companies remain independent when it comes to running the operations during the review period and tha they do not share customer information.

In the Philippines, the transportation agency caps the number of ride-sharing vehicles to 65,000 across all service providers and reviews that figure every 3-months. So far, there has been no statements released by both Grab and Uber over the order by the anti-trust agency.