The cartel, covering 80 per cent of the city's 900 driving instructors, called on the media yesterday to inform the public about the newly fixed prices for lessons on driving motorcycles, trucks, cars and buses. Its move follows the Laundry Association of Hong Kong's call last November for all laundries to raise prices by 10 per cent.

Union spokesmen said standardisation of fees was needed because of rising oil prices, population decline, poor economic conditions and the saturated market for truck and public transport drivers. They insisted the move, decided at a meeting of member organisations last week, was not equivalent to a city-wide increase in fees for driving lessons.

'The number of people taking driving lessons has dropped by 70 per cent since the handover because of the poor economy,' said Wong Chung-sang, chairman of the 200-strong Driving Instructors Association.

'Some driving schools or instructors lowered the fees by a large degree to attract customers. What we are doing now is just raising the prices back to the handover level.'

Instructors have been charging as little as $70 per 45-minute session to learn to drive a car, but the fee will now be set at $120.

Mr Wong said that although instructors were not legally bound to follow the move, he believed the majority would.

Only about 50,000 people applied for a driving licence last year, compared with more than 130,000 before the handover, he said. An instructor who used to make $17,000 a month would find it difficult to earn $10,000 now and 300 had left the sector in the past few years.

Truck driving instructors were worst hit because of the influx of mainland drivers, said Yam Chan-kwan, chairman of the Articulated and Commercial Vehicles Instructors Association.

The Consumer Council attacked the cartel's decision. 'We disagree with the coalition's move. Fixing charges will reduce competition in the industry, which will not be in the interest of the consumers,' its spokeswoman said. But the council said it could do little unless it received complaints.

Legislator Fred Li Wah-ming, who has been fighting for a law against price-fixing and monopolies, said he hoped the Competition Policy Advisory Group under the financial secretary would revisit the issue at its meeting in June. 'Otherwise, more industries will call for price-fixing,' he said.

David Koo Siu-wai, a computer programmer who is planning to take driving lessons, said the price-fixing would leave many customers with no choice.