Tesco is preparing to move most of its Irish finance back-office administration to Bangalore, India, as part of a group-wide consolidation of that function.

Of the 26 current jobs in Tesco's Irish finance back-office administration section, at least 16 back-office roles will move to Bangalore.

The company is in discussions with the Irish staff and with Siptu over the possibility of retaining up to 10 finance back-office jobs in Dublin.

It is understood that there will be no job losses in Ireland as a result of the reorganisation, with the remainder of the affected staff due to be redeployed elsewhere in Tesco's Dublin head office on their existing employment terms and conditions.

The shift from Ireland to India of the Irish finance back-office administration roles is part of an ongoing centralisation of that function within the Tesco group. That reorganisation has already involved shifting about 200 group back-office finance roles from Britain to Bangalore.

Tesco set up the Bangalore centre in 2004 and moved about 400 staff there that year from three British centres. The supermarket giant, which employs 390,000 staff in 16 countries worldwide, has outsourced both back-office IT and finance functions to Bangalore, where it now has a staff of about 500.

The target date for the move of the Irish functions to Bangalore is April 2007. A spokesman for Tesco Ireland declined to comment on the rationale behind the move to the Indian city.

"Tesco is planning to restructure its internal finance division, the company is in discussions with unions and staff and there will be no job losses," he said.

Analysts including Forrester, Gartner and Deloitte have forecast that India will win between three and six million white-collar jobs from overseas over the next six years, most of them transferred from US multinationals.