National economic policy objectives are often adversely affected. For example, a carefully devised tariff structure with low tariffs for intermediate goods to boost the competitiveness of the domestic industry could be frustrated, if administrative barriers add additional costs on the import of these goods. Unlike customs duties, which benefit the government budget, the invisible costs of administrative barriers are genuine deadweight losses, benefitting nobody and achieving no meaningful policy objective. Today businesses compete in a world where barriers to trade and investment are disappearing, thereby making capital and technology more mobile. Global economic integration has changed the nature of the international market place.
Industries establish themselves in places where they can operate most efficiently.
The availability of a high-quality physical and social infrastructure is the starting point for their decision on location. The macroeconomic environment, allowing business to operate in relative freedom is of utmost importance for business decisions. Business must have access to markets worldwide, both for their inputs and exports. Since Singapore, exploratory work has been carried out through a background note prepared by the WTO Secretariat on work already done or being done on the subject of trade facilitation in other international organizations, including non-governmental organizations. The background note describes the work of more than 15 organizations which are dealing with a wide range of aspects relating to the simplification of trade procedures.