The capital’s listed water utility, Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority (PPWSA), signed a construction deal yesterday with France’s Vinci Constructions Grands Projects to renovate the Chamkarmon Water Treatment Plan and enlarge its water production capacity from 20,000 cubic metres per day to 52,000 cubic metres.

The total cost of the project is about $23.5 million, with the construction work to be carried out by Vinci, according to project manager Benoit Chambost. Construction activity will start in September and is expected to be completed in two years.

“First we have to demolish the old facility, which will begin in the middle of September and then we hope to begin construction by the 20th,” he said yesterday.

Chambost added that the project was being funded 60 percent by concessional loan from the French Agency for Development (AFD), with PPWSA covering most of the remaining costs.

This is the second water project PPWSA has awarded to Vinci, after the French firm successfully bid on the second phase of the Niroth 2 water treatment plant on the southern outskirts of Phnom Penh in 2014.

Ros Kimleang, chief of PPWSA’s accounting and financial department, said the expansion is needed to ensure adequate supply of water as consumption increases rapidly in Phnom Penh in tangent with its rising population.

“The Chamkarmon Water Treatment Plan will become a significant part of our company’s production of water to supply to our consumers,” he said, adding that its existing water treatment facilities are operating nearly at full capacity.

PPWSA currently has capacity to produce about 600,000 cubic metres of clean water per day, but plans to increase this to 1 billion cubic metres per day by 2025. The utility has 330,000 customers while water distribution network of over 3,000 kilometres.