World trade is expected to grow 9.5 percent in 2010, after suffering its biggest collapse since World War II in 2009, the head of the World Trade Organisation Pascal Lamy said on Friday.
"Our economists are forecasting a world trade growth for 2010 of 9.5 percent with developing countries' trade growing 11 percent and industrialised countries' trade growing by 7.5 percent," the WTO director-general said.
"This means that trade-wise, there is light at the end of the tunnel and it's certainly a good forecast, good news for the world economy," he added.
World trade plunged 12 percent in 2009 due to the global economic crisis.
Patrick Low, chief economist at the WTO, noted that the projected growth of 9.5 percent this year would need to be repeated in 2011 in order for the global economy to recover to peak trade levels reached in 2008 before the crisis struck.
"If you need to do it in one year, you'll need 14 percent," he added.
Amid the slump in world trade last year, China overtook Germany to become the world's top exporter with some 1.20 trillion dollars worth of merchandise exported in 2009, according to WTO data.
Germany exported 1.12 trillion dollars of goods, while the world's biggest importer, the United States, was in third place with 1.06 trillion dollars worth of exports last year.
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