Are Govt policies and big business interests limiting competition in Singapore?

by Foong Swee Fong The article, "Driving schools fully booked for months; some students paying bots to secure limited lesson slots" by Channel News Asia, encapsulates all that is wrong with Singapore. The reason why students can’t get slots is because the “police stopped issuing private driving instructor licences in 1987 when the first two driving schools were set up”. The police cited coordination and safety reasons. In 1987, there were “thousands of them” but today “the country only has about 300 private driving instructors” as those who retired were not replaced. With the gradual reduction of private driving instructors, students have little choice but to patronize the two main driving centres. Thus, their business is booming not because they are providing excellent service at a competitive rate but because their main competitors - private driving instructors - are being reduced with each passing year, eventually to zero. Singaporeans should be incensed because what the authorities did is anti-competitive and disadvantageous to them, but not surprisingly, this being Singapore, they brushed it aside, accepting it, perhaps, as the price of progress. It is becoming a recurring trend: Big Business working hand in glove with the government to subvert the free market. For crying out loud! The police “stopped issuing private driving instructor licenses WHEN the two driving schools were set up!” How blatant must it get before people start waking up? While ComfortDelGro Driving Centre is part of the publicly listed ComfortDelGro Corporation, which is commonly perceived as government-linked, Bukit Batok Driving Centre is majority-owned by large corporate entities including Honda Motor Co, Kah Motors, and Income Insurance Ltd. The CNA article then quoted young Singaporeans who say they still want to learn driving despite the skyrocketing COE prices “due to the convenience and option of renting a vehicle” from car-sharing companies. It then relates the positive experience of a 22-year-old national serviceman, Calvert Choo, with car-sharing companies, about the price of rental and its convenient location near his HDB block, about Tribecar and GetGo, ending by saying that other reasons for learning to drive include working in the ride-hailing and delivery industry. I can’t help but sense that Big Business, with the government, is again trying to subvert the market: In 2012, taxis were exempted from the COE bidding process to prevent them from driving up Category A COE prices. Instead, they pay the Prevailing Quota Premium, which is the average of the previous three months’ Category A prices at the point of purchase, with their COEs sourced from the Open Category. This arrangement acknowledges that taxi companies are using passenger cars for commercial purposes unlike private car owners, and that they can outbid private car owners. However, recent trends have seen Private Hire Vehicles (PHVs), car-sharing companies, and even driving schools pushing passenger car COE prices higher, echoing the earlier situation with taxi companies. A simple solution would be to extend the taxi model to these groups. Yet, this approach has not been adopted, and authorities have instead proposed unrealistic solutions. If COE prices remain elevated, average and even above-average-income drivers will be priced out of the market, forcing them to use PHVs and car-sharing vehicles. Is this another diabolical scheme to force the people to patronize certain businesses, just like student drivers have now to patronize driving schools? There are numerous worrisome alliances between Big Business and the Government in our country. They are using fewer generic medicines compared to many other countries in the region, which may contribute to higher healthcare costs. Some have raised concerns about the influence of patented medicines within the healthcare system, potentially increasing overall medical expenses. As a measure of how preposterous the situation has become, the said CNA article, which in fact is propaganda and free advertisement for the respective big businesses, is published by state-owned MediaCorp, thus paid for by the people, to brainwash themselves! The Big Business-Government cancer has spread deep and wide. By subverting the free market, resources will be mis-allocated, the poor will be poorer, a large chunk of the middle class will become the new poor, and the rich will be richer, thus tearing society apart.