NEW DELHI, Feb 19: India is likely to top salary hikes in Asia for a fifth year in 2008, but companies in India are finding it hard to retain talent, a new survey said on Tuesday.

Indian salaries are expected to rise by an average 15.2 per cent in 2008 after rising 15.1 per cent last year, according to an annual survey conducted by global human resource company Hewitt Associates. Real estate and energy companies were seen offering the biggest hikes of 25 per cent and 17.5 per cent respectively.

China is expected to come in second with projected raises of about 8.5 per cent, followed by the Philippines with 8.3 per cent, the survey said.

However, the high salary growth is fuelled by a talent demand and supply mismatch, it said.

“Employees are increasingly looking for great career opportunities and are actively being pursued by other organisations,” said Sandeep Choudhury, a Hewitt executive. “Organisations are using compensation as a strategic lever.”

But the salary increases in India were expected to stabilise in the 9-10 per cent range by 2012, Hewitt Associates said.

The survey measured actual and projected increases in salaries of individuals in the private sector.

It examined compensation practices in five specific job categories executives, managers, midlevel staff, clerks and manual workers.

The survey covered 2,000 Asian companies, 540 of which are in India. The survey did not provide a margin of error.

The companies surveyed in India included foreign-owned, locally owned and joint venture companies across 19 industries.

The survey also showed that the traditional gap between salary hikes offered by locally owned and multinational companies had closed with Indian private sector companies projected to raise salaries by 15.5 per cent in 2008 compared with 14.9 per cent offered by multinationals, the survey added.

India’s booming economy has averaged nearly 8.5 per cent growth in the past five years, but more than 300 million of its nearly 1.1 billion people still live on less than a dollar a day and nearly twice that number struggle for access to basic facilities such as drinking water, education and health care.

Junior managers and midlevel staff received the biggest pay hikes in 2007, a trend likely to continue in 2008, the survey said.

The survey included companies in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand.—AP