Brazil’s lower house of Congress voted to approve lighter regulations on car-hailing apps, giving a boosts to Uber Technologies Inc. in one of its largest markets, Bloomberg informed.
The deputies upheld late on Wednesday two of three amendments made in the Senate last year, according to the lower house news agency. Those amendments eliminated requirements that would have made it more difficult and expensive for car-hailing companies to operate, such as using taxi-style license plates.
President Michel Temer can still veto all or part of the bill coming out of the lower house. He favors the bill in principle but has yet to study it in detail, according to two aides familiar with his thinking.
Uber, which had lobbied legislators intensely, celebrated the approval, saying that the lower house had heard the voice of 20 million users and half a million drivers in Brazil. Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are the company’s busiest cities and it billed half a billion rides in the six months through Feb. 20 alone in Brazil.
The legislation is balanced and put Brazil at the vanguard of regulating modern urban transport solutions, Cabify, another car-hailing service, said in a statement.
Indicative of the increasingly competitive environment, China’s Didi Chuxing said in January it would buy Brazilian ride-hailing company 99 Taxis.
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