Area of licensed buildings dropped by 27.5% during first 8 months of 2020 — DoS

AMMAN — The total area of licensed buildings during the first eight months of 2020 reached 3.158 million square metres compared with 4.335 million square metres in the same period last year, marking a 27.5 per cent drop, the Department of Statistics (DoS) announced on Sunday.

The department said that the total number of building licences issued in the Kingdom dropped by 22.8 per cent, reaching 10,612 licences during the January-August period, compared with 13,739 in the same period of comparison of 2019, according to the Jordan News Agency, Petra.

The area of housing buildings amounted up to 2.72 million square metres compared with some 3.362 million square metres in the same comparison period, registering a decline of 19.1 per cent, according to the DoS.

As for buildings licensed for non-residential purposes, the DoS said that their total area reached 438,000 square metres in the first eight months of 2020 compared with around 993,000 square metres in the same period last year, showing a drop of 55.9 per cent.

Licensed buildings for housing comprised 86.1 per cent of the total area of licensed buildings, according to the department.

Region wise, the centre region registered 65.4 per cent of the total area of licensed buildings, while the north recorded 26.5 per cent and the south witnessed only 8.1 per cent, according to the DoS.

At a monthly level, data showed that the number of building permits reached 2,029, while the area of licensed buildings reached 533,000 square metres, compared with 496,000 square metres during the same period last year, registering an increase of 7.5 per cent.