On July 12 2012 the Ministry of Transport submitted a demand (01-26-7-08-I/12) to the Competition Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina, requesting an opinion on the compliance of the draft Law on Transport by Taxi with the Competition Act (Official Gazette of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 48/05, 76/07 and 80/09). In early October 2012, the council issued a negative opinion.
On analysing the draft law, the council concluded that some of its provisions breached the Competition Act. For example:
- a taxi driver must have had a declared domicile in the city of Sarajevo for a period of five previous years;
- during the procedure to determine the value of offers for the allocation of taxi licences, a higher number of points is awarded to drivers who are in at least the third generation of a family providing taxi transport services;
- the total number of taxis should be defined in the ratio of 1:500 (one taxi to every five hundred inhabitants of Sarajevo) while the ministry determines the ratio once a year; and
- a legal entity can be awarded a maximum of 25 taxi licences.
The Competition Council found that these provisions were restrictive in the sense that they had as their object or a consequence the prevention, limitation or distortion of competition. They limited competition by imposing different conditions on identical transactions, thus putting some taxi drivers in a less favourable position. It seems that the ministry's work on the new taxi law is not yet complete.
For further information on this topic please contact Srdjana Petronijevic at Moravcevic Vojnovic i Partneri in cooperation with Schoenherr by telephone (+381 11 320 26 00), fax (+381 11 320 26 10) or email ([email protected]).
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