Sri Lanka has been rated the world’s eighth most charitable country in the world`. It retained its position from last year in a study of 153 nations carried out by the Charities Aid Foundation.

However Sri Lanka has seen a marginal drop in its score of 53% to 51% from 2010 to 2011.

Sri Lanka was named the country with third highest percentage of population claiming to ‘volunteer time’ at 46%.

The U.S. came top of the World Giving Index 2011 – which ranks nations based on how likely citizens are to donate money, volunteer their time and help strangers – followed by Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.

The Netherlands was sixth, with the top ten completed by Canada, Sri Lanka, Thailand  and Laos.

Despite the squeeze on income, 79 per cent of Britons give money to charity each month, up from 73 per cent in 2010, according to the research.

Worldwide there was a 2 per cent increase in people helping strangers and a 1 per cent increase in volunteering over the past 12 months, but a 1 per cent drop in giving to charity, the study based on Gallup polling data discovered.