The European Union, Germany and France has earlier this week provided a credit agreement worth 95.8 million euros (116 million U.S. dollars) to Cambodia to support the Rural Infrastructure Development for Cambodia (RID4CAM) project, said a joint press statement on Wednesday.

In Cambodia, where 70 percent of the population lives in rural areas, the project aims to finance both the improvement of rural road network in the country's central plain provinces and the construction of complementary infrastructure in drinking water and sanitation, agriculture, health and education sectors, the statement said.

RID4CAM is co-financed by the EU, the French government through the French Development Agency (AFD), and the German government via the German development bank KfW, it said.

EU Ambassador to Cambodia Carmen Moreno believed that the project will impact positively the life of tens of thousands of rural Cambodian families.

"A better connectivity to access markets and services is key to reduce poverty and economic disparities as well as to create new job opportunities in different provinces," she said."This is particularly important to accompany the recovery from COVID-19 crisis."

German Ambassador to Cambodia Christian Berger said recent floods have shown how important it is to make roads resilient for extreme weather events.

"Rural roads are vital economic lifelines for the 70 percent of Cambodian population," he said."I am proud that Germany joins hands with France and the EU to contribute to a climate-resilient rural infrastructure which will assure access to markets, schools and health centers also during extreme weather events."

French Ambassador to Cambodia Eva Nguyen Binh said there is no doubt that rural people in the central plain of Cambodia will benefit from the project.

"As we just celebrated the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement, we have renewed our commitment to fight climate change. Thus, I am particularly proud that this new AFD financing contributes fully to this objective, though the development of resilient and adaptive infrastructures in rural areas," she said.