Toyota fined for price fixing in Jiangsu

Toyota Motor Corp acknowledged the penalty and respects the decision after being fined 87.6 million yuan ($12.5 million) for violating antitrust laws set by China's market regulator.

"We have been informed about the penalty and we respect the decision," a spokesperson from Toyota in Japan told China Daily in a telephone interview on Monday, but he refused to make further comments.

On Friday, China's State Administration for Market Regulation published a document on its website that said Toyota Motor (China) Investment Co Ltd was fined for price-fixing on its premium Lexus cars in eastern China's Jiangsu province.

According to the document, Toyota had breached the law between 2015 and 2018 by setting a minimum resale price for Lexus cars in several cities in Jiangsu, depriving dealers of pricing autonomy and harming competition.

It also said Toyota took a number of measures to impose price controls, such as cutting supplies to dealers selling at lower prices for certain models.

In conclusion, the administration said the setting of a minimum price "had a relatively strong binding effect and deprived sellers of the right to set prices", and thus a fine was decided on Dec 6 due to "the interests of consumers being undermined".

Toyota is the seventh automaker fined for price fixing since China's Anti-Monopoly Law came into effect in 2008. In June, Ford Motor's joint venture with Chang'an Automobile Group was fined 162.8 million yuan for violating anti-monopoly laws.

"The anti-monopoly law is rather new in China and is barely used compared to other countries and that resulted in the re-occurring problem of price fixing," said Jin Jianmin, a senior fellow at Fujitsu Research Institute in Tokyo.

Jin said a better way to solve the problem is for China takes European Union's example where violating automakers are fined based on its global sales, not just on sales in the region where violations took place.

"In Toyota's case, the fine was 2 percent of Toyota's China unit's sales in 2016." Jin added.

China's auto sales declined in 2019, however, Lexus has fared well, with sales in the first 11 months of 2019 at 180,200 vehicles, a 21 percent jump from a year earlier.