The survey was conducted in Sierra Leone between July and September 2017 as part of Enterprise Surveys project, an initiative of the World Bank. The objective of the Enterprise Survey is to gain an understanding of what firms experience in the private sector as well as to help in building a panel of enterprise data that will make it possible to track changes in the business environment over time, thus allowing, for example, impact assessments of reforms. Through interviews with firms in the manufacturing and services sectors, the survey assesses the constraints to private sector growth and creates statistically significant business environment indicators that are comparable across countries. Only registered businesses are surveyed in the Enterprise Survey. Data from 150 establishments was analyzed. Stratified random sampling was used to select the surveyed businesses. The data was collected using face-to-face interviews. The standard Enterprise Survey topics include firm characteristics, gender participation, access to finance, annual sales, costs of inputs/labor, workforce composition, bribery, licensing, infrastructure, trade, crime, competition, capacity utilization, land and permits, taxation, informality, business-government relations, innovation and technology, and performance measures. Over 90% of the questions objectively ascertain characteristics of a country's business environment. The remaining questions assess the survey respondents' opinions on what are the obstacles to firm growth and performance.
