World trade fell by 12 percent last year amid the economic crisis, the worst decline in more than six decades since 1945, the World Trade Organization (WTO) chief said on Wednesday, according to foreign media.

"World trade was reduced by 12 percent in 2009," Pascal Lamy said at a breakfast policy briefing hosted by the European Policy Centre, a Brussels-based think tank, adding it was the "sharpest decline" since the end of the Second World War.

The WTO had forecast global trade declined by more than ten percent in 2009 as the financial and economic crisis hit worldwide demand.

The International Monetary Fund said in January that global trade contracted by 12.3 percent in 2009 and is forecast to expand 5.8 percent this year.