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Ghana earns about $45 million annually from the Business Process Outsourcing industry, the GNA has reported. Mr. Alhassan Umar, Executive Secretary of the Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) Secretariat of the Ministry of Communications told the GNA that in the short term Ghana was targeting to earn between $60 and $70 million a year and one billion dollars in the long term. �We hope to attract at least 10 major BPO companies from Europe and US to Ghana and we also want to get more local entities like banks and insurance companies, as well as companies from within the sub-region to transfer their back office jobs to BPOs in Ghana,� he was quoted as saying. To achieve these targets, Ghana has hired US company, Avasant, the leading BPO advisory company in the world to help reorganize the country�s BPO sector. Avasant is expected to gather data on the BPO market in Ghana and redesign promotional tools to market Ghana�s BPO potential internationally. On October 19, 2009, ghanabusinessnews.com published an exclusive interview the site had with the President and Managing CEO of Avasant, Dr. Pradeep Mukherji. In the interview, he said Ghana has potential to lead in BPO in Africa. A recent study by AT Kearney ranked Ghana as the top BPO destination in sub-Sahara Africa, even though, in terms of actual BPO revenue, South Africa is still the continent�s leader. Ghana�s rank was boosted by financial issues. The Ghana government intends to create 40,000 jobs in the BPO sector in five years, but Dr. Mukherji says Avasant hopes to �double or even triple that figure.� In July this year, Ghana hosted the first BPO conference in the country to emphasize Ghana�s attractiveness as a BPO destination.