A very sensitive, simple and selective spectrophotometric method for simultaneous determination of phosphate and silicate based on formation of phospho- and silicomolybdenum blue complexes in the presence of ascorbic acid is described. Although the complexes of phosphate and silicate with reagent in the presence of ascorbic acid show a spectral overlap, they have been simultaneously determined by principal component artificial neural network (PC-ANN). The PC-ANN architectures were different for phosphate and silicate. The output of phosphate PC-ANN architecture was used as an input for silicate PC-ANN architecture. This modification improves the capability of silicate PC-ANN model for prediction of silicate concentrations. The linear range was 0.01-3.00 microg mL(-1) for phosphate and 0.01-5.00 microg mL(-1) for silicate. Interference effects of common anions and cations were studied and the proposed method was also applied satisfactorily to the determination of phosphate and silicate in detergents.