A further impressive year of growth in BBC World Service audiences and online users was underpinned by sound management of our finances. Costs were kept under firm control with overheads reduced from an already low base.
 
In 2000/01 BBC World Service received additional funding of £5 million for operating expenditure and £7 million for capital, as a result of the 1998 Government spending review. This brought the total 2000/01 Grant-in-Aid for BBC World Service Broadcasting to £181.8 million, comprising £153.4 million for operating expenditure, £4.2 million for a subscription to BBC Monitoring and £24.2 million for capital. The World Service Broadcasting surplus for the year of £8.8 million arises primarily from an excess of capital Grant-in-Aid received for the Oman transmitter project over depreciation and other capital charges.
 
Looking forward, the Government's 2000 Spending Review, announced last July, will provide further increases in funding over the three financial years 2001/02 to 2003/04.
 

BBC World Service has an ongoing programme of efficiency improvements. Including the reduction in costs achieved by other BBC divisions, which provide English language programmes and technical and support services to BBC World Service, we were able to achieve overall efficiency savings of £3.4 million (2.3%) in the year.
 
The efficiency savings helped us to finance inflationary increases in our cost base so that the additional £5 million operating funding from Government was applied largely to new developments. These included the new multimedia websites in Russian and Spanish, which both came on stream during the year; securing a presence on FM in 10 further capital cities around the world; and the major change in programme scheduling for the English network which went live in April 2000.
 
We seek to achieve the best value for money in all that we do. This not only includes a firm control over costs, but also a continuing search for opportunities to offset costs by raising additional income in a manner consistent with the BBC's editorial and commercial guidelines. External income of £4.5 million was generated in the year from a number of sources, including the sale of programmes, co-production deals and publishing activities.
 
We add further value to the core Grant-in-Aid through partnerships with radio stations around the world, which rebroadcast our programmes at no cost to BBC World Service. As online becomes an increasingly important part of our overall offer, this model is now being extended to partnerships with key internet service providers in individual countries, enabling us further to expand reach without additional distribution costs.
 

The new subscription-based funding arrangement for BBC Monitoring has now been in place for four years. Subscription income from stakeholder customers (including BBC World Service Broadcasting) amounted to £19.5 million in 2000/01.
 

 

Finance & Business Development Director