NEW DELHI: Predicting moderate growth for the Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) region from 2006 to 2010, research firm IDC has said that human resources (HR) & training and finance & accounting (F&A) will continue to be the main drivers of BPO adoption in APEJ during the forecast period.

The BPO market in APEJ is estimated to increase to about $14 billion by 2010 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of approximately 18 per cent. The market in 2005 totaled $six billion.

IDC has attributed this moderate growth to much of APEJ remaining at the developmental stages of BPO adoption during this period.

These were some of the finding of IDC's Asia-Pacific (Excluding Japan) Business Process Outsourcing 2006 – 2010 Forecast and Analysis.

"Even though APEJ is a main center for BPO, majority of the contracts will still be derived outside of the region, mainly from the US and Western Europe. Local adoption will be more opportunistic," said IDC's senior market Analyst for Asia/Pacific BPO services research Conrad Chang.

"Although processing services will continue as the dominant form of business outsourcing, more pilot BPO projects are expected to emerge in the pipeline," he added.