Peruvian Congressman presents law to regulate Uber, Taxibeat and Easytaxi

Miguel Angel Elías Avalos, a member of Fuerza Popular, has presented a bill that seeks to regulate the taxi service provided by various platforms such as Uber, Taxibeat, Easytaxi, Cabify and their Peruvian clones, such as the Gaima App. The initiative has generated suspicion and raised controversy among lawyers in the sector.

Bill 1505/2016-CR seeks to establish a series of requirements to be met, including not picking up street passengers that are not registered for the service, issuing payment vouchers, as well as having mechanisms to identify the vehicle and the route to be followed, among other regulations.

It also would require that the service provider has at least one local administrative office while proposing the creation of a Mandatory Register of Technology Platforms for the Private Transportation service. This list would register all of the companies that wish to provide their service in Peru.

There are some who have expressed disapproval of the proposal: In the view of Mario Zúñiga Professor at the University of Lima, it is an example of “out of date regulation” and comes from a place of “ignorance of the collaborative economy”.

“Forcing regulation without understanding the dynamics will only backtrack us,” said Erick Iriarte of the Iriarte & Asociados studio. The project, he adds, does not focus on the main problem, which could be the treatment of private user data on that platform, but rather attempts to regulate a digital reality “that is unknown” and tries to propose territorial schemes for something based on a non-territorial digital environment.