Gold Export Duty & Taxes in Sierra Leone

1. The 2026 cost stack at a glance

When you export precious minerals from Sierra Leone, the price you ultimately pay is not a single number. It is a short stack of statutory charges, each with its own basis and its own recipient. Before anything else, here is the whole stack in one place, so the rest of this guide simply explains each line.

Two things matter about this table before you read on. First, every figure is charged on assayed value, not on gross weight — the stones or the metal are measured and graded first, and the charge follows the value, not the lump. Second, these are the rates in force as this guide is written; duty rates live in the annual Finance Act and in regulations under the Mines and Minerals Development Act 2022, and governments do adjust them. Treat the numbers here as the shape of the cost, and confirm the exact current rate with the authority before you commit funds.

2. Gold export duty — the 5% rule

The headline charge on gold is a 5% export duty. The Precious Minerals Trading Directorate (PMTD), which sits under the National Minerals Agency, states plainly that export duty is "levied on the total value" of the gold at the rate of five per cent. The word that does the work there is value: the duty is not five per cent of the weight you walk in with, nor of the price you privately agreed with a miner. It is five per cent of the value the state establishes when the gold is assayed and weighed under supervision.

That distinction protects you as a buyer. Because the duty is pinned to an independently assayed value, neither the seller nor a middleman can quietly inflate the base it is charged on. The assay fixes the fineness; the net fine weight follows; the world price on the day fixes the value; and five per cent of that figure is the duty. If a seller cannot show you how the 5% was derived from an assay certificate, that is a signal to slow down.

3. The rehabilitation-fund levy

On top of the duty, every exporter of precious minerals contributes a small levy — 0.05% of the value of each export — to a mines rehabilitation fund. In cash terms this is tiny next to the 5% duty: on a hundred-thousand-dollar export it is fifty dollars. But it is a statutory contribution, it appears on compliant paperwork, and its presence is itself a useful tell. A valuation document that itemises the rehabilitation levy is a document produced inside the real PMTD process. One that omits it may have been produced outside it.

The levy exists because artisanal and small-scale mining leaves physical scars on the land — pits, tailings, disturbed watercourses. The fund is the mechanism by which a fraction of every lawful export is directed back toward repairing that damage. For a buyer, the practical point is simply that it is one more line you should expect to see, not a surprise charge invented at the counter.

4. Diamond duty, advance tax and the GGDO

Diamonds carry a different and slightly longer stack than gold. Rough diamond exports attract a 3% export duty on their assessed value — lower than gold's 5% — but they also carry a 0.3% advance income tax, and the same 0.05% rehabilitation levy as every other precious mineral. The valuation that all three are charged on is set by the Government Gold and Diamond Office (GGDO), the state body that values rough stones before they are allowed to leave under a Kimberley Process certificate.

The GGDO step is not optional and it is not a formality. A parcel of rough is opened, sorted, weighed in carats and valued stone-by-stone or lot-by-lot by government valuers. That GGDO value becomes the base for the 3% duty and the 0.3% advance tax, and it is the value written onto the Kimberley Process certificate that accompanies the diamonds out of the country. If you are buying rough, the GGDO valuation is the number that matters — it is both your tax base and your proof of a legitimate, conflict-free origin.

5. How "value" is actually calculated

Everything above charges a percentage of value, so the honest question is: how is value fixed? For gold, the chain is short and mechanical. The gold is assayed to establish its fineness — expressed as a purity percentage or in carats. That purity, applied to the gross weight, gives the net fine weight of actual gold. The net fine weight is multiplied by the prevailing world gold price (the London benchmark, in troy ounces, converted to the weight unit used) to give the export value. The 5% duty is then taken on that value.

For diamonds the chain runs through people rather than a formula: the GGDO valuers assess the parcel and assign a value, informed by carat weight, colour, clarity and the current rough market. There is more judgement in it, which is exactly why it is done by a government office with two parties present rather than by the seller alone. In both cases the principle is identical — the thing is independently measured first, a value is fixed, and the charges follow the value.

6. GST, income tax and what is not charged

It is as important to know what you will not be charged as what you will. Exports from Sierra Leone are generally zero-rated for Goods and Services Tax, which means GST is not stacked on top of a compliant export the way it would be on a domestic sale. If someone tries to add a standard-rate GST line to an export quote, ask them to justify it against the zero-rating of exports.

Corporate income tax, separately, is a matter between the exporting company and the National Revenue Authority — it is assessed on the business's profits over a year, not charged transaction-by-transaction at the counter, and it is not something a one-off buyer pays. The advance income tax on diamonds (0.3%) is a withholding against that eventual liability, which is why it sits on the export rather than the annual return. For a buyer, the line items that actually touch your transaction are the export duty, the rehabilitation levy, and — for diamonds — the advance tax. That is the list.

7. Who sets the rates — and why they move

Rates are set by the Government of Sierra Leone. The primary instrument is the annual Finance Act, which can raise or lower duty rates from one fiscal year to the next, operating within the framework the Mines and Minerals Development Act 2022 lays down for how precious minerals are licensed, valued and exported. Assessment happens at the PMTD; collection runs through the National Revenue Authority; payment is made to the Bank of Sierra Leone before a certificate is released.

This is why no responsible guide — including this one — will promise you that 5% is eternal. It is the rate in force now. A Finance Act can change it, and West African mineral fiscal regimes are reviewed more often than people expect, as governments balance revenue against the risk of pushing trade informal. The durable advice is procedural, not numerical: before you transact, get the current rate confirmed in writing by the NMA or PMTD, and make sure the figure on your valuation matches the figure the authority quotes.

8. A worked example, start to finish

Take a one-kilogram gold export to see the stack in motion. Suppose the gross parcel assays at 96% fine. The net fine weight is 0.96 kg, or about 30.86 troy ounces. At an illustrative world price of USD 2,400 per troy ounce, the export value is roughly USD 74,060. On that value: the 5% export duty is about USD 3,703, and the 0.05% rehabilitation levy is about USD 37. The duty and levy together come to roughly USD 3,740 — close to five per cent, because the levy is a rounding error beside the duty.

Notice what drove every number: the assay (96%), the net fine weight it produced, and the world price on the day. Change the purity or the price and every line moves, but the method does not. That is the whole point of pinning charges to assayed value — it makes the cost reproducible from documents anyone can check, rather than from a figure someone asserts. When you receive a real quote, run it back through this same chain and confirm it lands where the maths says it should.

9. Frequently asked questions