AMMAN — The Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) has made several amendments to its licensing regulations for food purveyors, according to a GAM official.

Vendors of food, juice, sweets and ice cream are now exempt from providing parking for their customers if their establishments do not include seating, Emad Hiyari, director of GAM’s craft licences department, said in a statement made available to The Jordan Times.

To benefit from the exemption, owners must sign formal letters confirming that they do not provide their customers with chairs and tables.

Anyone who violates this term by providing seating without providing parking will be fined JD10,000 and his or her licence will be revoked, according to the statement.

The new amendments also require grills and butcher shops to provide their customers with parking spaces.

The municipality has granted 1,188 licences for establishments in all of these categories, according to the statement.

Abu Zaid, a confectioner who works at his father’s sweets shop in Jabal Hussein, described the decision as an incentive for people to open businesses, although he noted that it is too late for some of his colleagues to benefit from the new regulations.

“These businesses will boom in the future. Before GAM took this step, people were forced to pay extra money to provide their clients with parking spaces even though they did not have chairs and tables,” he told The Jordan Times.