India Inc has been able to dole out reasonably high salary increases despite the economic slowdown. And going ahead, with the economy is expected to grow at over 6 per cent, the industry is estimated to see overall average salary increases at 8 per cent for 2009.

Sector wise, the survey revealed that salary increases in the pharmaceutical, consumer and manufacturing sectors have been in excess of 7 per cent including wage freezes while the worst hit IT Industry has an almost zero increase (median) this year across most companies. Telecom has brought some respite with a fairly reasonable salary increase budget thus pushing the overall increase in the Hi-tech space to about 5 per cent.

Double digit salary increase

With a sample size of 93 companies, the survey noted that majority of them forecast a double digit salary increase for 2010 and that July and October are expected to be the most prevalent months for salary reviews this year.

"The salary increase forecast shows an optimistic sentiment with the overall forecast for 2010 at 10.9 per cent compared to 8 per cent this year. Most sectors are forecasting double digit increases for next year .The IT sector is showing improved sentiments with increases expected to leap back to by a few percentage points next year after a long lasting lull of near zero percent increase this year," said Gangapriya Chakraverti, India leader of Mercer's information product solutions business.

On offering bonuses, 90 per cent of the survey respondents say they have an institutionalized variable pay plan mostly in the form of performance based bonus plans whereas a few firms also have a profit sharing scheme.