According to CICT commissioner Damian Mapa, this shortfall of workers will increase every year until 2010 unless drastic changes are undertaken to improve acceptance rates among companies and sustain interest levels both among college graduates and existing workers.

'Right now the call centers are still growing at a very fast rate. However, by 2010 the growth will be limited already by the number of graduates,' Mapa said in an interview with Computerworld Philippines.

'Whereas the back-office processing will overtake call centers by 2009 or by 2010. And all the way up to 2015 and beyond we will see that the growth will be on back-office processing,' Mapa added.