Spain: Uber report highlights hight cost of taxi “monopoly”

US ride-sharing company Uber has launched a new offensive in its ‘war’ against Spain’s traditional taxi sector, defending the liberalization of the market for individual passenger transport licenses. This step, Uber argues, could create more than 12,000 new jobs in the country’s major cities, according to data from the study carried out by financial consultants Analistas Financieros Internacionales (AFI).

According to the report, if the current limits on VTC-type licenses are withdrawn, the average rate for individual transport services could fall by up to 35%, benefitting consumers. The reduction would be equal to about three euros per journey, in addition to the reduction of waiting times with an additional saving of more than 120 million euros per year in Madrid alone.

Uber has invoked these results to demand an “urgent liberalization” of the sector, hoping to prevent the market from growing in a disorderly way as a result of licenses granted through judicial channels. For its part, the country’s largest Taxi union, FEDETAXI, has denounced the report, which they accuse of “proposing to raise taxes on private cars while Uber avoids their payments in Spain.” The association disqualified Uber’s report, considering that the rebates and benefits that it says ” Can do it now and without more municipalities … without the need to create 80,000 new licenses and in the process ruin 100,000 families of Spanish taxi drivers. ”

Fuente: Republica

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