A Dunedin accounting firm is using employees in India to process "lower end" tax returns and to carry out other more mundane accounting tasks.
Polson Higgs, which has 120 staff and offices in Dunedin and Christchurch, also has three full-time and seven part-time staff in Coimbatore in southern India.
Chief executive Graham Crombie told the Otago Daily Times yesterday the firm began outsourcing labour from India last May because of the difficulty of recruiting staff in New Zealand.
Mr Crombie, who was president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants last year, said demand from overseas for New Zealand-trained accountants meant there was a shortage here.
About a quarter of the institute's 30,000 members were working overseas at any one time.
"There's nowhere near enough accountants to run our business."
Coimbatore, with a population of about 1.6 million, has 30 polytechnics and universities and a "hugely talented workforce".
New Zealand staff have been to Coimbatore to carry out training.
Mr Crombie said setting up the system was a three-year project and it was not a "cheap experience".
"There's a lot of training to go into play and there's a lot of just making sure your IT equipment's right and your security's right and all that sort of stuff."
The amount of accounting work had increased because of changes to KiwiSaver and tax rates.
Mr Crombie was not aware of any other Dunedin firms outsourcing labour from India.
"We see this as a way of actually making sure we can grow and service our clients here in New Zealand."
The firm is adding to its Dunedin building and Mr Crombie joked that perhaps if it had not been for the outsourcing, it might have had to add two floors rather than one.
The ANZ bank on Monday denied speculation that it intended shifting 500 Australian jobs to Bangalore, in India.
