Sierra Leone improves though when it comes to obtaining credit, where it ranks 128^th out of 183—making the country one of the worst in the world in this area. Here, as depicted in Figure 2, the Bank examines the legal rights of creditors and borrowers in secured transactions and bankruptcy law as well as the strength of credit information bureaus and exchanges. When lenders have both strong legal rights and easy access to a wide variety of information about the client’s creditworthiness, reasons the Bank, the more available credit will be. When information on borrowers is significantly lacking – as is the case in most of Africa – legal protections for creditors must in turn be very strong. Sierra Leone performs relatively poorly while creditors have relatively strong rights, information on borrowers is nearly nonexistent.

Figure 2:

How the World Banks Conceptualizes Credit Acquisition

When it comes to protecting investors and minority shareholders, however, Sierra Leone improves dramatically. Here, the country ranks 28^th out of 183 countries.  Sierra Leone receives this score because it requires fairly strong disclosures among corporate officials and has strong director liability laws.  Also important, the country is relatively friendly to minority shareholder lawsuits.

Sierra Leone does much worse thought in the area of taxation. The World Bank estimates that pleasing the tax man in Sierra Leone requires a total of 29 payments over the course of a year which, in turn, takes up to 357 hours to complete and can consume up to 100% of a company’s profits. Accordingly, Sierra Leone’s tax burden is ranked 159^th out of 183 nations, making it one of the very worst in the world in this area.

When it comes to engaging in cross-border trade, Sierra Leone remains a poor place to do business. In Sierra Leone, to import goods into the country one is required to have seven documents for customs officials to inspect. On average, it takes a total of 31 days to import goods into Sierra Leone with the cost amounting to $1,639 (excluding tariffs) per container shipped into the country.