The French Agency for Development has granted a 30 million euro, or $31.1 million, loan for the Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority (PPWSA) to expand one of its four water plants and increase its water distribution in the capital.

Ninel Ulloa Maureira, deputy director at the French Agency for Development, said the Chamkarmon district water plant will undergo a rehabilitation to increase its capacity to produce 52,000 cubic metres of water per day by 2019, up from the 14,000 cubic metres of water produced per day in 2016.

That will bring the authority’s total capacity up to nearly 600,000 cubic metres of water per day in 2019, up from 560,000 now.

“The work is expected to begin in [the first quarter] of 2017, and last two years,” she said.

The total cost of the project will be $47.1 million, but the authority will finance the rest.

“An additional 330,000 [people] should be able to connect to the improved water supply network,” Maureira said.

Under the project, the city’s 2,000 kilometres of pipeline will also be expanded by 450 kiometres across 20 communities on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, said Samreth Sovithiea, a deputy director at the PPWSA.

Sovithiea said the authority will have to reach 100 percent of its service area by 2025. Currently, only about 92 percent of the capital’s population has access to safe, clean water.