The global recession has taken its toll on the salary packages of India'snew corporate managers, with the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta(IIM-C), seeing a drop of 23 percent in the average salary offered to its freshgraduates.

"The average salary fell by around 23 percent this time. But it has to beemphasised that the firms that visited the campus last year did not lower theirpackages this year. The intake per company has come down, resulting in the fallin package," IIM-C director Shekahr Chaudhuri told newspersons hereTuesday.

Conceding that recession has affected placements in the IIM-C, Chaudhuri said:"We, however, succeeded in finding placements for all our 265 students inthe sectors they preferred by staggering the placement process to 10 days,spread over two phases. We closed it down only after all our students wererecruited."

The domestic average annual salary offered this year is Rs.1.27 million, withthe highest offer being Rs.6 million. Last year the domestic average salary wasRs.1.64 million, and the highest offer Rs.6.5 million.

The average international package exclusive of bonus is $86,785, with the highestoffer being $130,000. "Given the global scenario, where jobs are hard tocome by, we are happy with the placement of graduates. We had apprehensionsthat the situation could be much worse," he said.

Despite the financial sector being the hardest hit, 40 percent of the students- as against 34 percent last year - opted for finance jobs, both in India andabroad. Of the total 56 offers from the finance companies, 16 came from WallStreet bankers, including Barclkays Capital, Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan Chase,Morgan Stanley and Macqarie Bank.