Haiti, the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country with about 80 percent of the population living on less than $2 a day, will get an Inter-American Development Bank grant to expand water services in the capital.

The Washington-based lender said today that the $35.5 million grant will help support the second phase of a water and sanitation program to boost drinking-water supplies, reduce losses from leaks and clandestine connections, and improve chlorination and bacteriological tests in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s most populous city.

An outbreak of cholera in Haiti was blamed on United Nations peacekeepers following their arrival after a January 2010 earthquake, which killed about 200,000 people in the former French colony that shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic.

To contact the reporter on this story: Randall Hackley in London at rhackley@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Randall Hackley at rhackley@bloomberg.net