NEW DELHI, Nov 5 (Reuters) - Sri Lanka's central bank has been buying gold for the past five or six months as it diversifies its reserves amid volatile markets, the bank's governor said in an interview on Thursday.

'We have been fairly strong accumulators of gold reserves over the past few months,' Sri Lanka Central Bank Governor Ajith Nivard Cabraal told Reuters in a telephone interview from the southern Indian city of Chennai.

'We haven't stopped yet,' he added, declining to quantify how much gold the central bank had bought or how much of the more than $4.8 billion of the country's reserves were in gold.

'Many countries are today diversifying. They are also looking at intrinsic value of their reserves, so gold would be a natural candidate for that kind of reserve accumulation,' he said.

(Reporting by Tony Munroe; Editing by Alistair Scrutton)

((tony.munroe@thomsonreuters.com; +91 22 6636 9257; Reuters Messaging: tony.munroe.reuters.com@reuters.net)) Keywords: SRILANKA C.BANK/GOLD

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