PORT LOUIS (Reuters) - Mauritius is set to have 10,000 outsourcing jobs by early 2008, a jump of 44 percent from 6,960 jobs at present, a senior business development official said on Friday.

Ranked by the World Bank as the best country in Africa for doing business, the Indian Ocean nation is opening and diversifying its roughly $6.7 billion economy, including the small but fast-growing outsourcing industry.

"By early 2008, it is expected that the industry would have created about 10,000 jobs," Amedee Darga, the head of Enterprise Mauritius, wrote in the daily newspaper L'Express/

Enterprise Mauritius is a parastatal organisation to promote and boost Mauritian business.

Some 185 outsourcing companies in Mauritius currently provide 6,960 jobs, Darga wrote.

A rapidly growing industry since the boom in Internet and communications technology, outsourcing is the contracting of tasks to firms often in another country with a cheaper wage base.

With a workforce of more than 550,000, Mauritius' strengths include comfort with both English and French, political stability, and a good business environment.

Its outsourcing industry includes call centres, accountancy, human resource and payroll management.

Darga criticised the small island nation's lack of official strategy for outsourcing, adding that information and communications technology were vital.