SINGAPORE - The Land Transport Authority will compute taxi availability based on a taxi company's hired-out fleet, instead of its total fleet.

The authority said on Tuesday this adjustment was in response to feedback from the National Taxi Association and taxi companies.

It will be applied retrospectively from Jan 1, 2015.

The availability standards remain unchanged.

At any one time, a percentage of each taxi company's fleet may be unhired. The percentage of unhired taxis across the industry in April 2015 was close to 4 per cent, the LTA said.

LTA said it recognises that using only the hired-out fleet to compute availability measures the efficiency of hired taxis more accurately.

More importantly, taxi drivers would not have to increase their mileage to make up for the non-performance of the unhired taxis.

LTA reiterated that only taxi companies that meet the availability standards will be allowed to expand their fleet.

One of the standards state that cabbies must clock a minimum daily mileage of 250km.