ATHENS, Greece – Under intense pressure from lenders to honor its deficit-cutting targets and with a forthcoming installment of its bailout package still up in the air, Greece has decided to adhere to another tax measure it sprang on a weary public last week.
Greece also chose to put off a harder task, streamlining a bloated and inefficient public sector, for 2012. An inner Cabinet meeting Sunday produced no new policies other than a commitment to focus on spending cuts in 2012 and, in the words of Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos, end up with a “less costly, smaller, better, smarter” public sector.
Before embarking on that mission, the government still must live up to its commitment to achieve its 2011 budget deficit goal of 7.6 percent of gross domestic product. When it became obvious earlier this month that there was a more than euro2 billion ($2.75 billion) shortfall in the budget, Greece’s lenders — the eurozone member countries, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund — threatened to withhold the sixth installment of a euro110 billion rescue package agreed upon in May 2010.
In a near panic, the government came up the previous weekend with a property tax, to be levied
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