Given positive integers $q$, $n$ and $d$, denote by $A_q(n,d)$ the maximum size of a $q$-ary code of length $n$ and minimum distance $d$. The famous Gilbert-Varshamov bound asserts that $A_q(n,d+1) \geq q^n / V_q(n,d)$, where $V_q(n,d)=\sum_{i=0}^d \binom{n}{i}(q-1)^i$ is the volume of a $q$-ary sphere of radius $d$. Extending a recent work of Jiang and Vardy on binary codes, we show that for any positive constant $\alpha$ less than $(q-1)/q$ there is a positive constant $c$ such that for $d \leq \alpha n, A_q(n,d+1) \geq c \frac{q^n}{ V_q(n,d)}n$. This confirms a conjecture by Jiang and Vardy.