The business process outsourcing sector is expected to keep growing 50 percent annually until 2010, the chief of the Commission on Information and Communications Technology said Wednesday. Speaking at the sidelines of the ICT Professionals Congress held at the Hotel Intercontinental Manila in MakatiThe business process outsourcing sector is expected to keep growing 50 percent annually until 2010, the chief of the Commission on Information and Communications Technology said Wednesday.

Speaking at the sidelines of the ICT Professionals Congress held at the Hotel Intercontinental Manila in Makati City, CICT chief Ray Anthony Roxas Chua III said the local BPO industry is on track towards generating one million jobs and $13 billion in annual revenues by 2010.

He added that the shrinking pool of qualified applicants for call center agents and other BPO professionals could affect the continuous growth of the industry.

Secretary Augusto Syjuco of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority said his agency is intensifying efforts to train new call center agents to fill the demand. "We have the potential to capture half of all the call center requirements of regions in the world in the next five years but it all depends on our ability to keep churning out the supply of knowledge workers to fulfill this potential," Syjuco said.

The Business Processing Association of the Philippines earlier said the local BPO sector generated $4.8 billion in export revenues and employed around 320,000 individuals in 2007.