"France has decided to give Jordan an easy loan of 200 million dollars to help implement the project of drawing water from Disi (aquifer) to Amman," said the director of the French Development Agency's Jordan office, Gerard Larose.

"The agency will provide 100 million dollars, while the other 100 million dollars will be given to Jordan by the French private sector," Larose told AFP.

Under the 990-million-dollar plan, which was launched last year, Jordan seeks to extract 100 million cubic metres (3.5 billion cubic feet) of water a year from the 300,000-year-old Disi aquifer in the Mudawwara area, 325 kilometres (200 miles) south of Amman.

Infrastructure work on the much-delayed project in the tiny kingdom -- where 92 percent of the land is desert -- is expected to take around four years.

Jordan's overall population of nearly six million is growing by almost 3.5 percent annually, and it is one of the world's 10 most water-impoverished countries, relying mainly on rainfall to meet its needs.

The country will need 1.6 billion cubic metres (56 billion cubic feet) of water a year to meet its requirements by 2015, according to the water ministry.