Chandigarh: Fresh hiring in IT and ITeS industry is likely to slow down to 2 lakh this fiscal, while salary hike in the sector would be lower by 2.5% next year, IT industry body Nasscom said on Monday.

“This year, the new recruitments in IT sector are estimated to be two lakh this fiscal compared to 2.80 lakh people due to global recession,” Nasscom Chairman Ganesh Natarajan said.

However, he categorically said there would not be any job cuts at the industry level.

“There could be job cuts in one particular company. May be because its business model is not right or some other reasons, but overall the industry would not force any job cuts,” he asserted.

On being asked about what was the view of Nasscom on salary hike of employees for next year, he said “while considering the present conditions, the increments in salary packages would be 7.5% next year compared to 9% this year”.

“The growth in salary hike has come down from 13.5% last year to 9% this year and we hope it will further dip to 7.5% because the kind of recession we are going through as it is not cyclical rather a serious structural recession and it will stay for some time,“ Natarajan said.

IT industry in the country employs about 20 lakh persons directly.

However, Nasscom was of firm view that IT industry would continue to grow by 20 to 23% this year compared to 28% growth it attained last year. “We anticipate that we will be achieving $50 billion of IT exports and $13 billion of IT business from domestic market,” he said.

With several key markets such as USA showing sign of saturation, Nasscom asked industry to look for other markets for capitalising opportunities in diverse areas of mobile gaming, animation, utility services and new product developments.

“The industry should now look at East Europe, South Africa and Latin American countries where the growth opportunities are quite high,” he said.