Outsourcing continues to grow as UK-based BG Group PLC announced plans to outsource the billing of 18 million customer accounts to India.

A spokesman for the company said, "We are in the process of introducing computerized customer billing system some time next year and 18 million customers' billing accounts will be outsourced to India."

The spokesman added that UK call centers would continue to handle the requirement of customers in the UK, while non-customer work will be outsourced to India. There will be no redundancies in the company's UK call centers until the summer of 2006.

BG Group's spokesman did not say how many jobs would be lost because of the planned outsourcing.