Area of licensed buildings dropped by 22.4 % in 2020 — DoS

AMMAN — The total area of licensed buildings by the end of November 2020 reached 4.986 million square metres compared with 6.424 million square metres in the same period of 2019, marking a 22.4 per cent drop, the Department of Statistics (DoS) announced on Tuesday.

The department said that the total number of building licences issued in the Kingdom dropped by 15.9 per cent, reaching a total of 16,677 licences in 2020, compared with 19,822 during the same period in 2019, according to the Jordan News Agency, Petra.

The area of housing buildings went down to 4.327 million square metres, while it totalled 4.923 million square metres in the same comparison period in 2019, registering a decline of 12.1 per cent, according to the DoS.

As for buildings licensed for non-residential purposes, the DoS said that their total area reached 659,000 square metres in the January-November preriod of 2020 compared with around 1.501 million square metres in the same period in 2019, marking a drop of 56.1 per cent.

Licensed buildings for housing comprised 86.8 per cent of the total area of licensed buildings, according to the department.

Regionwise, the centre region registered 64.8 per cent of the total area of licensed buildings, while the north recorded 26.5 per cent and the south witnessed only 8.8 per cent, according to the DoS.

The DoS provides data on the number of licensed buildings, their area and type of use in each governorate so as to provide planners, policy- and decision-makers with information on construction activity.