Infosys Technologies employees have something to cheer about.

After a gap of two years, the software powerhouse has decided to give promotions to its employees in India, a move that would lead to the company's cost of sales increasing by one per cent.

"We have mapped out people's roles in various bands, and we have not promoted people for the last two years. We have decided to give people their due, and therefore promotions and salary hikes will be taking place in India only. Therefore, the impact of this wage hike will be one percentage point on the cost of sales.

"Cost of sales will go up by one per cent point because of any wage hike," Infosys chief financial officer Mohandas Pai said during an analyst call, a copy of which has been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission of the US.

However, the company is not anticipating any wage increase overseas." We do not anticipate any wage increase overseas, that is onsite to India. Within India, we anticipate, we have moved on to being a role-based organisation," Pai was quoted as saying.

India's number two software exporter is not anticipating any wage pressure at the entry level in India and said that trainee cost would come down in India.

But, at the middle level, the company is expecting a wage pressure as a result of increased hiring and keen competition from other companies.

However, a great part of this wage increase would be variable, depending on the achievement of certain revenue targets.

Infosys also said that the company has seen an attrition rate of about 6.9 per cent in 2002-03 -- the same as last year.

"As for competitors hiring away our people, our attrition rate for this year has been about 6.9 per cent, the same as last year, and we notice that people with experience of more than three year do not leave us as much as possibly people with lesser experience, and even for people with lesser experience, people do leave us sometimes because they want to pursue higher education and not for many other reasons," the company's SEC filing said.

According tot he company's SEC filing, Infosys is looking at hiring about 800 to 1000 people in first quarter of the year and the hiring will be based on the business requirements.