Driven by ever-expanding workforce and salary levels, the employee expense bill of Indian corporates has grown beyond Rs 1,00,000 crore (Rs 1,000 billion) level with public sector companies and private sector IT giants retaining their position as the top spenders.
The collective employee expenses of companies, whose fiscal year end on March 31 and have announced their full-year results, has grown to Rs 1,14,900 crore (Rs 1,149 billion), representing a 35 per cent gain over Rs 85,000 crore (Rs 850 billion) in the previous fiscal.
However, the combined turnover of these 505 companies, whose annual results are available with stock exchanges, has increased to Rs 14,31,209 crore (Rs 14,312.09 billion).
This represents a 13 per cent increase from the cumulative turnover of 644 companies last year, which stood at Rs 12,67,348 crore (Rs 12,673.48 billion), based on the available data.
The companies spent close to eight per cent of their collective turnover on employee expenses in the last fiscal, up from about six per cent a year ago.
The country's largest lender State Bank of India remained the biggest spender with annual employee cost of about Rs 10,600 crore (Rs 106 billion) for the year ended March 31.
SBI is followed by Tata group's IT arm TCS, the country's largest software exporter, which booked a bill of over Rs 7,700 crore (Rs 77 billion) for employee costs in the year.
Infosys and Wipro, the other two domestic IT giants, incurred employee expenses of Rs 6,314 crore (Rs 63.14 billion) and Rs 5,768 crore (Rs 57.68 billion) respectively.
PSU steel giant Steel Authority of India Limited came at the fifth place with total employee expense bill of Rs 5,133 crore (Rs 51.33 billion) in the year.
While Satyam Computer's employee expenses stood at Rs 3,858 crore (Rs 38.58 billion) in FY07, PSU oil giants like ONGC and Indian Oil Corporat also spent close to Rs 3,000 crore (Rs 30 billion) each on their workforce.
Besides other IT firms, banks and metal firms emerged as major spenders on employees.
Fourteen banks, from both public and private sectors, featured in the top 50 companies' list in terms of employee expenses.
Largest private sector lender ICICI Bank was at ninth position with a total bill of about Rs 2,636 crore (Rs 26.36 billion), while Punjab National Bank, Bank of Baroda, Canara Bank, Bank of India, Syndicate Bank, Indian Bank, HDFC Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Allahabad Bank, Andhra Bank, Bank of Maharashtra and UTI Bank booked employee expenses between Rs 400-2,400 crore (Rs 4 to Rs 24 billion).
Besides, companies like Tata Motors, Mahindra and Mahindra, Tata Steel, L&T, Aditya Birla Nuvo, NTPC, Bharti
Airtel, Reliance Communications and Tech Mahindra recorded employee expenses of between Rs 1,000-2,500 crore (Rs 10 to 25 billion) each.
In the previous year ended March 31, 2006, SBI was on the top with annual employee expenses of Rs 10,764 crore (Rs 107.64 billion), a tad higher than its latest year bill. However, most of the major spenders have seen an increase in their employee expenses in FY07.
TCS' bill increased from Rs 4,720 crore (Rs 47.2 billion) in FY06, while Infosys, Wipro and Satyam also recorded higher employee expenses in their latest fiscal.