Taxi licence speculators are exploiting loopholes to push up prices, the Ombudsman said yesterday.
Loose regulations and lax supervision meant they could trade in licences with little or no chance of being punished, despite reforms in 1994.
'The existing system does not meet the 1994 objectives to curb speculative activities,' the Ombudsman's chief investigation officer Daniel Chan Yat-lin said.
'The monitoring system is inadequate to ensure that the licences are used for their intended purposes and not for speculation.' Market prices jumped from $1.8 million for a single urban taxi licence in 1993 to $3.48 million in March this year, the latest available official figure.
Ten Lantau licences were tendered early this year, fetching $2.32 million each.
Under the 1994 review, new holders were barred from selling their licence for a year and each person or company could buy only one licence. But Mr Chan said loose monitoring meant individuals could use their own name and those of their firms to buy more than one licence.
