General Electric Co., the world’s biggest provider of energy equipment and services, will boost research spending to grab more of an estimated $5 billion market to filter and recondition water for utilities and governments.

“We think it’s going to be a great business not only in the U. S. but in China,” where much of the country has limited access to water, Jeffrey Immelt, GE’s chief executive, told about 100 global customers last week at GE’s management-training center in Crotonville. “The entire Middle East is constrained. So this is a problem that’s shared broadly.”

GE plans to bolster research and technology development at the water unit by 50 percent in the next two or three years and considers wastewater and reuse as the “biggest opportunities” for growth, Steve Bolze, who oversees the water and power equipment units for the GE Energy business, said in an interview at the event. GE doesn’t disclose the unit’s spending target.

Part of the spending includes new research centers in Singapore and Saudi Arabia as the company sells its water treatment products to utilities and municipalities. GE is shrinking GE Capital, its finance division, and boosting investments in what Immelt has labeled infrastructure units that sell products to countries and companies. GE’s equipment helps produce a third of the world’s electricity.

GE, based in Fairfield, Conn., is building a $108 million research center for water in Singapore.

“One of the things we are trying to accomplish in Singapore is to make Singapore a hub for water solutions, so we’ve encouraged companies like GE and other multinationals,” said Khoo Teng Chye, the chief executive for Singapore’s Public Utilities Board.

Within a year, Singapore expects to double the 15 percent of drinking water it reconditions annually, he said.

Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell, who also spoke to the group, said while his state doesn’t have a water shortage problem yet, most states expect to encounter a shortfall in less than 10 years.

“Like the rest of the world, even in Pennsylvania, our days our numbered,” said Rendell, a Democrat who has led the state since 2003.

GE Energy Infrastructure, which includes the water division, provided $38.6 billion of the parent company’s $182.5 billion in sales last year.

The company, which has built through acquisition GE Water Process & Technologies under Immelt’s more than eight years as chief executive, doesn’t break out the division’s finances.