Will Infosys freeze recruitment, mulls pay cuts?

Employees of Infosys Technologies may have to live with a salary cut and without any significant increment, even as the IT bellwether has virtually frozen fresh recruitments on account of the global meltdown, a top company official has said.

"A part of our salary is determined by variable sales component, which is the percentage of the company's revenue," said Infosys' director for human resources T V Mohandas Pai.

"Since the revenues are down, the salaries will naturally be trimmed."

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a press conference here, Pai said the leading software exporter and business process outsourcing firm may also opt out of salary hikes because of the slowdown.

"The increments may not happen this year. But, if they do, they will be subdued."

Pai also maintained that the company will honour the 20,000 campus offers made last year, but added that fresh hiring has been frozen.

Infosys, India's second largest IT firm, had reported a net profit of Rs.16.41 billion ($335.5 million) for the third quarter of this fiscal, to log a 33 percent year growth. The jump was above expectations but below what it had logged in the past decade.

Speaking about the fallout of the $1.43-billion Satyam Computer Services scam, Pai said Infosys had, indeed, received offers from some customers of the rival group, which were being analysed.

"Our chief executive officer (K. Gopalakrishnan) had earlier made an announcement that we have received offers from Satyam customers," he said, adding: "But we do not go and poach on customers."

Gopalakrishnan had also said last month that there was no pro-active move on the part of his company to approach Satyam customers. "But if they come on their own, we will look into their proposals case-by-case."

Agencies

Computer sales across Asia drop

Sales of computers in the Asia Pacific region outside Japan fell for the first time in a decade during the fourth quarter, as the global meltdown hit consumer spending, a study said on Monday.

Preliminary figures showed 17.2 million desktop computers and laptops were sold in the December quarter, down 14 per cent from the previous quarter and 5 per cent lower than a year ago, global market intelligence firm IDC said.

The figures marked the first year-on-year decline since the third quarter of 1998 when the region was grappling with the Asian financial crisis, it added.

"This quarter was quite a jaw-dropper" not just in China but also in India, said Bryan Ma, regional director for personal systems research with IDC.

"The clouds are darkening in 2009, although there might be some pockets of shelter in the region's public sector."

For 2008, struggling Chinese computer giant Lenovo was the region's number one vendor with market share of 18.3 percent, followed by US rival Hewlett Packard which had 14.1 per cent, and Dell at 9.1 per cent, IDC said.

Taiwanese computer firm Acer was fourth with market share of 7.5 per cent and China's Founder ranked fifth, with 4.0 per cent.

Agencies

Job losses would be temporary, says Montek Ahluwalia

The government on Friday said the current economic situation could lead to some job losses, but these would only be temporary with economy poised to grow at seven per cent this fiscal.

"Certainly in sectors that are badly affected, if we are not able to completely counter the effect of recession, there may be some job losses. We hope they will be temporary," Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia told reporters while briefing on the stimulus package.

He said the idea behind this package is to ensure that economy does not slow down too much.

Ahluwalia said the economy is expected to grow at seven per cent this fiscal and that will be a good performance.

"So, when I say that this package will hopefully generate a growth rate of seven per cent, that is a growth rate that is certainly consistent with the total number of jobs in the economy increasing," he said.

The Planning Commission Deputy Chairman, however, said it is not possible to completely counter the impact of an external slowdown.

"But with this package what we are doing is minimising the pain on that score," he added.

Source: Agencies

General Motors India to hire 500 people

Even as companies are giving pink slips to employees as a result of the global meltdown, GM India is increasing its employee strength from the present 4,000 to 4,500 by 2009, a top official of the company said.

"We will be increasing the number of our employees from 4,000 to 4,500 by 2009," GM India Vice-President P Balendran told mediapersons here.

"The 500 include 300 for the car plant in Talegaon, 200 for the powertrain facility, also in Talegaon, and the engineering centre in Bangalore", he said.

On slashing prices, Balendran said the firm, which had been offering discounts ranging from Rs 2,000 to Rs 50,000, besides a discount of Rs 3,000 to Rs 5,000 to government and PSU employees during the festival season, would continue them (discounts) till the end of this month.

However, the firm is planning a price hike of 2-3 per cent in January 2009, he said. The market, Balendran said, was sluggish and the usual sales growth during the festive season, which used to be in the range of 25-30 per cent, had come down to 5-7 per cent this season.

"The main reason for the sluggishness is there is no liquidity in the market. Eighty-five per cent of GM's vehicles are financed, of which 70 per cent are by private banks," he said.

On the Talegaon plant, Balendran said, "The capacity of the plant, which commenced operations in September 2008, can go up from 1.40 lakh units now to 3 lakh units."

Source: Agencies