The time taken to get products from factory to ship is absolutely vital, says Dr Cong Pham of Deakin University.

The time taken to get products from factory to ship is absolutely vital, with every day that a product is delayed before being shipped reducing a country's trade by more than 1%.

That's according to research undertaken by the World Bank and Deakin University which looked at how time delays as a form of trade costs affect international trade in 98 countries, including Australia.

According to Dr Cong Pham, an expert on international trade at the university, merely reducing the time it takes to get goods from the factory gate and onto a ship would have as much a positive impact on a country's trade performance as reductions in tariffs.

"One day of delay is equivalent to a country distancing itself from its trade partners by 70km on average. The impact is twice as much for landlocked economies," says Pham.

Surveys showed the whole process of documents preparation, customs clearance and technical control, ports and terminal handling and inland transportation takes, on average, 10.7 days in the OECD countries and 23.3 in East Asia and the Pacific.

While Australia's required time for export, which is nine days, is less than its neighbours like New Zealand (10 days) and Indonesia (21 days), it needs to do much better in order to catch up with the best OECD performers in this respect. Export procedures only take five days in Denmark and Singapore and six days in Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Netherlands and the United States.

"The main reason for Australia's underperformance is that an exporter in Australia has to fill out, on average, six documents while those in the OECD, on average, fill out 4.5.

"Comparatively, the cost of exporting in Australia is more expensive, with the average cost being USD1200 compared with USD902 in East Asia and the Pacific and other OECD countries where the cost is USD1069. To improve our performance, we would have to reduce any delays at our ports further and reduce the paperwork."

Pham adds that while Australia can't reduce the spatial distance that separates it from the world, it can promote its trade substantially by simplifying its export procedures.