Two senior ministry officials, who declined to be named, said the aim was to attract more capital flows from wealth funds in West Asian countries.
Earlier, Finance Minister P Chidambaram had said he thought the figure was 262 tonnes.
Overall, merchandise imports rose 10.9 per cent to $41.95 billion.
His officials are working on a series of steps to attract at least $20 billion in new investment to fund the deficit without depleting India's $300 billion in forex reserves.
Will help to reduce current account deficit and restore growth.
Cabinet will take a decision on a conciliation offer from Vodafone.
India's policy to subsidise retail prices of fuels such as diesel, which accounts for about 40 per cent of refined fuel consumption, is a major drain on the budget.
The minimum threshold to come under GAAR will be Rs 3 crore.
Chidambaram said he expected gold imports to touch $40 billion in the current fiscal year to end-March, down 31 percent from the year-ago bill of $58 billion.
An estimated 177 million Muslims in India, the largest Muslim minority population in the world, are unable to use Islamic banks because laws covering the sector require banking to be based on interest, which is forbidden in Islam.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government is in a race against the clock to pass reforms economists say are needed to breathe life into Asia's third-largest economy.
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the Bhopal tragedy have brought back into focus the issue of industrial accidents, contractual liabilities and questions of operator liability, notes Manoj Kumar and Lydia Powell in an Observer Research Foundation study, which will be published in a three-part series. Here goes the first part:
In the second part of a three-part series, Manoj Kumar and Lydia Powell, in an Observer Research Foundation study, discuss at length the various loopholes in the Nuclear Liability Bill, whose amended version was recently passed by the Lok Sabha.
In this third and concluding part of an ongoing series, Manoj Kumar and Lydia Powell, in an Oriental Research Foundation study, highlight some national nuclear liability frameworks.
Musharraf said he was confident that bilateral talks would gain momentum after the February 18 general elections in Pakistan.
"The recent talk about a new cold war is hyperbolic nonsense. Our relations today are fundamentally different (with Russia) than they were when all we shared was the desire to avoid mutual annihilation," she said, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday.
Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath has said a hefty cut in the US interest rates will have a positive impact for the Indian exports, but industry leader Rahul Bajaj felt the move will further hit exporters. "The US Fed's decision would rather boost Indian exports to America as it would raise demand in the biggest economy of the world," Nath said at the World Economic Forum annual meet in Davos.
FM will participate in WEF meet at Davos. Global equity woes likely to dominate talks at the meet.
With industry and tax payer-friendly initiatives taken by Finance Minister P Chidambaram this year, the government succeeded in achieving unprecedented growth in tax collections. Consequently, the tax reforms have gained momentum and a roadmap is ready for implementing goods and service tax from April 1, 2010.