Multilateral agreement to cut red tape in international trade would dramatically reduce trading costs and add billions to the global economy, said the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on Friday.

The results comes from the new OECD Trade Facilitation indicators, which are designed to help governments improve their border procedures, reduce trade costs, boost trade flows and reap greater benefits from international trade.

Reducing global trade costs by 1 percent would increase worldwide income by more than 40 billion U.S. dollars, most of which would accrue in developing countries, according to the OECD.

"Trade facilitation is about easing access to the global marketplace," OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria said while launching the new indicators.

"Complicated border processes and excess red tape raise costs, which ultimately fall on businesses, consumers and our economies," Gurria said, urging governments to use "trade facilitation negotiations to reduce or eliminate these bottlenecks."

In its new research, the OECD estimated that "comprehensive implementation of all measures currently being negotiated in the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Doha Development Round would reduce total trade costs by 10 percent in advanced economies and by 13-15.5 percent in developing countries."

The OECD study found that trade facilitation helps boost both imports and exports significantly and it enables enterprises to widely involve in international trade.

Trimming border procedures would bring more than 5 percent of GDP in some African countries, while streamlining procedures would further reduce trade cost by 2.8 percent for upper middle-income countries, 2.2 percent for lower middle-income countries and 1 percent for advanced economies, the OECD indicators showed.

The OECD work on trade facilitation indicators (TFIs) was undertaken to measure the relative economic and trade impact of trade facilitation measures currently under negotiation in the WTO on trade flows and trade costs in all WTO members. Endi

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