Cambodia’s ride-hailing drivers want the apps to keep no more than 15 per cent of each fare. Drivers call that share the commission. Drivers on seven platforms said outside the labour ministry on 21 August that the apps had been taking more than 17 per cent, and as much as 30. Grab’s public affairs manager in Cambodia said in April that the company applies 15 per cent and refunds any excess the next day. Point 2 of an agreement the Phnom Penh municipal administration brokered on 3 April says the same.
The labour ministry says it and the commerce ministry ran ten meetings in all on the drivers’ concerns. Some were inside one ministry and some between the two. It does not say over what period. Three of six proposals came out settled and three did not. The ministry says it has now sent those three to the Cambodia Competition Commission, with the minutes and related papers. It asked the body to examine them and act further under the procedures in force.
The ministry’s own words were transmit and examine, not set a fare. It gives the three open items three labels: competition, price-setting principles and consumer rights. The body’s name carries the same word as the drivers’ cut. The two are unrelated: one watches how companies compete, the other is what the app keeps.
Article 6 of the competition law of 5 October 2021 sets out thirteen jobs for that body. The English text comes from the issuer, which calls it unofficial. None of the thirteen is a power to set, cap or approve a price for a service.
Article 7 stops competitors agreeing to fix, control or maintain the price of goods or services. It carries no threshold of its own, while Articles 9 and 11 and the article setting the law’s scope all reach only conduct that hurts competition to a marked degree. So Article 7 reads two ways: as catching any price deal between competitors, or as carrying that threshold anyway. The law does not settle it. Article 38 puts one month to two years in prison behind an Article 7 deal, for a person who takes part in one.
Grab has said publicly how its own prices move. From 10 March, it said, it would pay drivers a subsidy for each completed trip and make a temporary adjustment to its dynamic pricing, so the system can move prices with economic conditions.
The Council for the Development of Cambodia, the government’s investment agency, said the two sides at a courtesy call on 31 August explored what Grab could contribute to price rules coming in ride-hailing. That account names no decree, no decision and no drafting body. Pricing is one of three subjects it lists as explored. The three plans the visiting executive set out are on small business, driver training and tourism, and the executive runs organisational capability for Grab.
The Minister of Commerce leads the Commission, and the commerce ministry is one of the two that ran the meetings. The transport ministry licenses the operators, and whether fares sit inside that power is not established either way.
The ministry announced the last arrangement in May and said the companies had agreed to it. From 1 June to 31 August an extra 500 riel rode on every trip, alongside a ceiling of 15 per cent on the app’s cut. Drivers put the first kilometre at 3,000 riel and each one after that at 1,200. The 500 is about a sixth of a first kilometre.
In April the drivers asked the labour ministry to press the apps to set one base fare across all of them. That is the shape of deal Article 7 names, and Article 13 puts the request for permission with the people about to make one. Whether the law reaches a price arrived at through a ministry is untested. It defines a deal as one between people running a business, and says nothing about a price a ministry sets. The drivers are not the ones who would be asking.
