Bhubaneswar, June 6: Splurging on interior design must take a backseat to common budgeting sense when it comes to buying wood to build your home in the city.

Pricey imported wooden planks are all you’ll find at the market because of shortage of local supplies of this important construction material. The shortage has resulted in large-scale import of wooden planks from abroad.

The city requires around 1.5 lakh cubic square feet (cft) of planks a month but only 10 per cent of the requirement is met by suppliers from within the state.

Sources in the forest department said teak and sal planks were also being imported by various timber depots in the city from African countries and Malaysia. Teak from Nigeria and Myanmar is in huge demand whereas sal from Malaysia has also been able to create its own space in the city market. The city has around 80 timber depots.

“Most of the timber coming from foreign countries is unloaded in Raipur where it is sawed into planks,” said a forest official. The city used to have around 50 private saw mills in the past, but following a Supreme Court decision, they have stopped functioning.

However, the Odisha Forest Development Corporation (OFDC) has seven sawmills at various places in the state, the nearest from Bhubaneswar being located at Khapuria in Cuttack. Though the cost of imported planks is more than those supplied by the forest development body, the latter cannot meet the local requirement because of the limited number of mills.

Sources said the cost of one cft of imported sal plank varied between Rs 1,300 and Rs 1,500, which is Rs 200 more than the price of that supplied by the OFDC. Similarly, the cost of 1cft of imported teak plank varies between Rs 1,700 and Rs 2,500 depending on the quality of the timber. This too is Rs 200 more than the price at which OFDC sells teak planks.

Residents here are forced to pay more because of shortage of local supply. “For the construction of a 1,400 square feet house one needs 100 cft wooden planks, which includes 50cft teak planks for windows and doors and around 50 cft sal plank for the frames. As there is shortage of locally grown timber, one has to spend around Rs 20,000 more on imported planks,” said Hemant Samal, a resident of Rasulgarh.

The timber depot owners, however, alleged that lack of adequate sawmills in the city was the reason behind imports. “One has to take permission of the forest department and saw the timber at the nearest OFDC-run sawmill at Khapuria in Cuttack, which raises the production cost. So we are forced to import the planks from neighbouring states,” said a depot owner in the city.

Dearth of sawmills in the city has also prompted many timber depot owners to saw timber illegally. The Chandaka forest division has recently started a drive to crackdown on timber depots in their jurisdiction for flouting norms. “During our raid, we have found some timber depots sawing timber illegally. We are also checking their records. All the timber depots in our jurisdiction will be checked,” said assistant conservator of forest, Chandaka forest division, Sasmita Lenka.

Rules of the forest department for regulation of timber depots require their owners to submit details of their transactions to the range officer concerned within the first week of every month.