New Delhi: Gearing up for the next placement season from next month, the country's premier business schools are expecting their students from the 2010 batch to be placed with a much higher salary than their predecessors in 2009, who were placed during the global slump down.

A market research firm, The Nielson Company, recently conducted a survey for the same and concluded that, the average salary expectation this year is about 14.6 lakh per annum for the country’s major schools.

Students of the prestigious Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) in the last batch (2009) got at an average Rs.13 lakh per annum as a domestic offer and this time, it is 13% higher than that of the last year's.

The companies have resumed to expansion plans this year, declaring the message loud and clear that the worst might be over for the Indian economy. November saw the industrial output growth by 11.7%, which is the highest in two years, triggering companies to hire.

Companies confirming their participation in the campus recruitment programme include BNP Paribas, Barclays Bank, TCS Citibank, Infosys and Procter and Gamble.

A Citibank spokesperson said, "This time we plan to recruit in bulk from the B-schools."

However, this year's average salary is still below the levels of 2008 which recorded a whopping Rs.16 lakh per annum.