Predictions that newspapers will vanish to make way for the internet are wrong as global sales inched up in 2008, according to the head of the World Association of Newspapers.

Paid circulation grew 1.3 per cent worldwide last year, taking global sales of newspapers to an average of 539 million copies daily, Gavin O'Reilly said at the opening of a two-day WAN conference in Barcelona.

Sales growth in Africa, Latin America and Asia - which is home to the world's three largest markets, China, India and Japan - offset declines in Europe and the US, said Mr O'Reilly.

If the 40 million copies of free newspapers which were distributed daily around the world last year are taken into account, total circulation rose 1.6 per cent last year, according to preliminary WAN figures.

Mr O'Reilly said newspapers faced a "very difficult" period due to the global economic downturn and the rise of the internet but it was a "mistake" for commentators to predict the death of the dailies as the sector "continues to grow."

Advertising revenues in daily newspapers fell by about five per cent last year and the drop should be even deeper this year but he predicted the sector would "rebound" once the global economic downturn has passed.

Print media continued to absorb 37 per cent of advertising revenues compared to just 10 per cent by the internet, most of it on search engines Google and Yahoo, he said.

Mr O'Reilly is the chief executive officer of Independent News and Media, the largest press group in Ireland and South Africa, in addition to president of WAN, which groups some 18,000 newspapers from around the world.

Several US newspaper groups have declared bankruptcy in recent months among them the Tribune Co., owner of the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and the Baltimore Sun.

Two major US dailies, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Rocky Mountain News, have shut down in the past few months, and dozens of others are threatened.