AFTER early rains damaged local production, Cambodia will need to import salt for the first time in recent memory. The government plans to purchase 60,000 tonnes of salt from China's Guangdong province after domestic production was set to fall by more than two-thirds to only 30,000 tonnes this year, officials said.

"We plan to import 60,000 tonnes of salt from countries in the region to fulfil market demand. We are confronting a salt shortage because our production has been so little this year," Ly Seng, president of the Kampot-Kep Salt Production Association, said Tuesday.

Chhun Hinn, Kampot's director of the Department of Industry, Mines and Energy, said that given the poor season, if Cambodia did not import salt, it would "face serious problems ... so we need to prepare".

The shortage has already hit salt wholesalers.

Uy Sen, a Kampot wholesaler, said he does not have enough to sell and may have to close.

"We don't have white salt to sell," he said, adding he had dark salt which would sell at a loss.