WUHAN, May 29 (Xinhua) -- China Gezhouba Group Co (CGGC) announced late Tuesday that its subsidiary in Brazil has purchased a 100 percent stake of a water supply company in San Paulo in a latest move to improve the Chinese state-owned construction giant's presence in South America.

The acquisition has also enabled the subsidiary to have the operational rights of the water supply program, known as Sistema Produtor Sao Lourenco, in the most populous city in Brazil.

Initiated in 2014, the program is expected to be completed and go into commercial use by August this year. The program includes water treatment utilities, pumping stations, and 83 kilometers of pipelines. Construction cost 860 million U.S. dollars.

With a water supply capacity of 410,000 tons a day, the program will be able to serve 1.5 million local residents in San Paulo, a metropolis grappling with chronic water shortages, said CGGC.

The acquisition marks a breakthrough and indicates great potential for CGGC in the South American market where it has been the main contractor on a series of major hydroelectric projects including the Sopladora hydropower station in Ecuador and a 36.9-billion-yuan (5.75 billion U.S. dollars) project on the Santa Cruz River in Argentina, said Chen Xiaohua, CGGC deputy general manager and chairman of China Gezhouba Group Overseas Investment Co Ltd.

CGGC, the main builder of the Three Gorges project, reported surging net profit in 2017 buoyed by its restructuring and booming overseas business. The group's net profit surged 37.9 percent to 4.68 billion yuan last year, up from 3.39 billion yuan in 2016.

The company, headquartered in the central China city of Wuhan, has overseas outlets in 99 countries, 33 of them in countries along the Belt and Road.

Among its 106 under-construction overseas projects, the biggest include the 21-billion-yuan Neelum-Jhelum hydropower plant in Pakistan, the 29.6-billion-yuan Caculo Cabaca hydropower plant in Angola, and a 38.3-billion-yuan Mambilla hydropower project in Nigeria.