Bulgaria’s Cabinet has tabled in Parliament amendments to the Carriage by Road Act that would empower municipalities to set limits on taxi tariffs, in a move intended to end abuses in the industry – but the move already has been opposed by the Commission on the Protection of Competition and some in the taxi industry, who have threatened to blockade Sofia’s streets if the legislation is approved.
Exorbitant tariffs charged by some taxi firms and drivers have been the subject of numerous complaints over the years, especially among foreigners and expatriates in Bulgaria, although it is not only non-Bulgarian-speakers who fall prey to cheating by copycat companies and unscrupulous drivers who charge excessive fees or use special devices to inflate fares.
There have been moves from authorities and from some major players in the industry against abuses, including a raid by police and tax authorities in early summer 2010 against "pirate" taxis in Plovdiv, and court actions by large companies such as OK Supertrans against rivals who mislead passengers by mimicking the names and logos of reputable companies.
At the beginning of August 2010, Bulgarian National Television (BNT) reported that some drivers continued to use "pumps" to manipulate their taxi meters.
BNT interviewed a taxi firm executive, Iliya Vassilev, who said drivers in some companies were using "pumps" that were operated by various means, sending electronic pulses to taxi meters in various ways, including a remote control device in the driver’s pocket, or buttons linked to the volume button on radios or music players or electronic windows.
"Maybe some passengers will have noticed how drivers turn up the volume on music, or open and close windows," Vassilev said.
Such pumps were usually difficult to find, inspectors said, because the mechanisms customarily were concealed deep in the electronics of the car.
Nikola Chavdarov, of the inspectorate in Sofia, said that inspectors did not have the legal right to dismantle a taxi’s dashboard, for instance. "It (a pump) can be hidden anywhere," he said.
Even if passengers complain about inflated tariffs, inspectors might not arrive in time to prevent the driver removing such apparatuses, BNT said.
However, taxi companies said that they usually took matters into their own hands, fining drivers who were the subjects of complaints. "A good image among customers is directly linked to their profits," according to the BNT report.
Companies said that they routinely fined drivers, including one case of a driver who regularly had been fined about 200 leva a week. However, when asked to show documentation of these fines, the firms said that these were confidential.
Travelling with an odometer, a BNT reporter found some discrepancies between the mileages recorded by taxi meters and the distances recorded by the odometer. While sometimes the distances matched, in other cases there were differences of about 30 per cent.
In July, Sofia’s deputy mayor in charge of transport, Lyubomir Hristov, said that the municipality intended to introduce ceilings on the amounts that taxi companies would be allowed to charge customers.
Any limits would be put in place with the consent of the major taxi companies in Sofia, he said.
The amendments envision price limits being imposed by the local authorities, who also licence cab companies, and would have to be updated at least once a year or at the request of the Transport Minister.
Hristov said that the price would be determined using a formula that would include vehicle ammortisation, an average weighted price of fuel and even the driver's salary. Sofia municipality was already working on drafting several such formulas that could be presented to taxi companies as soon as Parliament approved the amendments, he said.
According to city hall statistics, about 5000 cabs in Sofia had valid licences. The amendments envision fines of 3000 leva for taxis charging more than the ceiling imposed by the local authorities.
In June, the country's competition watchdog rejected the Transport Ministry's proposal on cab price caps, saying that it would only serve as an excuse for taxi companies to institute a price cartel, stifling competition and innovation.
"Putting a maximum price ceiling on the taxi service would mean that all parties affected would create a cartel among themselves and establish prices which are close to the preceding ones," Dnevnik quoted a spokesperson of the Commission for the Protection of Competition as saying.
The report said that the Transport Ministry had requested the opinion of the commission on the matter, and in turn, the commission said that that they "understand the social aspect of implementing such a measure, but that it would be against established European practices".
"This would negate the initiative from the companies. It will deter them from improving the diversity of their services, and the quality of service," the commission said.
Bulgarian-language media reports on September 1 2010 said that taxi companies had said that if Parliament approved the proposed amendments, they would blockade Sofia.
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