BBC World Service has today confirmed that it will be closing five of its foreign language services as it attempts to find £67m worth of savings.

The Albanian, Macedonian, Portuguese for Africa and Serbian language services, as well as the English for the Caribbean regional service, will all be axed.

The broadcaster is being forced to make the cutbacks to meet a 16% savings target after having its Grant-in-Aid funding from the UK's Foreign & Commonwealth Office slashed.

It was reported yesterday that around 650 staff, around a quarter of World Service's 2,400 workforce, will lose their jobs. Tthe BBC said it would not confirm details until a staff briefing is held tomorrow.

Peter Horrocks, the BBC global news director, said: "These closures are not a reflection on the performance of individual services or programmes. They are all extremely important to their audiences and to the BBC.

"It is simply that there is a need to make savings due to the scale of the cuts to the World Service's Grant-in-Aid funding from the UK's Foreign & Commonwealth Office and we need to focus our efforts in the languages where there is the greatest need and where we have the strongest impact."