World trade contracted 12 pct in 2009: WTO's Lamy

WTO Director General Pascal Lamy said the organisation had revised its previous estimate of a contraction of about 10 percent in 2009 but gave no forecast for 2010.

"World trade has also been a casualty of this (global economic) crisis, contracting ... by about 12 percent in 2009," Lamy said during a visit to Brussels, calling it a huge drop and the sharpest decline since the end of World War Two.Asked about world trade in 2010, he declined to give any figure but said: