The BBC is losing up to £15 million a year on a rolling news channel which is not available in Britain but is being protected from the widespread cuts to be unveiled this week.

The scale of the losses incurred by BBC World, the BBC’s worst performing service, is similar to the savings that the corporation’s news division is being asked to find, expected to amount to £100 million over six years.

The corporation says that BBC World is not dependent on the licence fee and receives no public subsidy or grant, surviving instead on a loan “in the low double-figure millions” from the corporation’s commercial division, BBC Worldwide. But the profits of BBC Worldwide are used to fund BBC programmes - £75 million in dividends and £96 million in BBC programmes. John Smith, its chief executive, boasted that the commercial arm’s profits last year have already helped to reduce the £135.50 colour TV licence by about £9.

Three years ago Michael Grade, then the chairman of the BBC, threatened the station with closure and said that BBC World “can’t go on sustaining losses”. Those losses - £12 million to May this year, £14.7 million in 2006, £15.8 million for 2005 and £16.4 million for 2004 - are just short of the £16.6 million annual savings that BBC News is being asked to find over each of the next six years.

The corporation insists that BBC World is too important to be closed. Richard Sambrook, the head of BBC Global News, says it is a “very important shop window for the BBC globally”. The channel, available on satellite and cable in most parts of the world, makes payments to BBC News and hands over an unspecified sum to use the BBC name, according to accounts audited annually by KPMG.

However, the sheer size of the BBC provides support for the channel, which would not otherwise be able to run at such a high level of loss. The deficit amounts to 25 pence in every pound of revenue.

The Times understands that BBC World will not be earmarked for closure when Mark Thompson, the Director-General, presents a five-year plan for the corporation this week. He is expected to announce about 2,600 job losses on Thursday, including as many as 600 in BBC News.

BBC World aims to break into the crowded US market, where cable operators have little space for new channels and the BBC is competing against other emerging news providers, such as al-Jazeera International.

The channel carries advertising, which provides 55 per cent of its revenues. The advertising is affected by the vagaries of world events – in a major crisis advertisers shun global channels because they do not want to be associated with bad news. The plan is for BBC World to break even in 2010, although Mr Sambrook concedes that “nobody is expecting BBC World to make big profits”. Turnover rose to £40 million in 2006-07 compared with £35 million the year before.

Don Foster, the Lib Dem culture spokesman, called for greater integration between BBC World and the World Service and said: “The public should be consulted about where the reductions should be made.”

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