NEW DELHI: India Inc at the top list among  Apac  countries with a projected increase in salary of 9.4% in 2018,  it’s a revealed data from Aon India’s Salary Increase Survey. Chinais the second. It is with an increase of 6.7%.

“Despite an improvement in macro-economic forecasts, salary increases remain at the same level as was projected in the last fiscal,” said  Anandorup Ghose , partner at  Aon India . “With increasing maturity, HR budgets are being realigned towards top performers as opposed to the broader population.”

Pay increases are becoming more different, Ghose added. “We are increasingly seeing a group of factors impacting salary increases, such as size of the company or organisation, business dynamics within the sub industry, nature of talent requirements and quite obviously, performance,” he said.

The survey was conducted around 1,000 companies across 20 industries, said companies in India gave an average pay increase of 9.3% last year. It marked a departure from the double-digit increments given by organisations earlier. The projections for 2018 are expected to be similar, highlighting increasing prudence being displayed by companies, while finalising pay budgets.

 The attention is on the performance and focus on performance is getting sharper and important every year across sectors and companies. Top performers are getting an average salary increase of 15.4%, around 1.9 times the pay increase for an average performer.

Infact,  there is a reason to cheer for people in professional services, consumer internet companies, life sciences, automotive and consumer products, as these continue to project a double-digit salary increase for 2018. The attrition rate in India has come down from an average 20% in previous decade to 15.9% in 2017.