Greece took desperate measures last nighton Sunday to calm fears that it is on the brink of default – or might even leave the eurozone – by announcing a new property tax to plug budget shortfalls.

With the debt-stricken country at serious risk of being denied an €8bn (£6.9bn) rescue loan from the EU and International Monetary Fund, Athens said that it would apply the levy immediately.

"It is the only measure that can be enforced immediately and produce results quickly because it does not depend on the tax collecting mechanism," said Evangelos Venizelos, the Greek finance minister, adding that the levy would be collected through electricity bills.

Determined to dispel international consternation that the near-bankrupt nation has not done enough to meet fiscal targets, Venizelos said that parliamentarians, from the president downwards, would also see their wages docked.

In the coming weeks, Greece's highly successful shipping community will similarly be approached to participate in "what has to be a collective effort" to save the country. "Cosmopolitan Greeks should contribute to this national campaign," the minister added.

Venizelos said: "The next two months are absolutely vital … We must prove all those who say that Greece can't, or doesn't have the will, is a pariah or does not deserve to be in the euro, wrong."

The measures were announced after a cabinet meeting in Thessaloniki where, after a night of fiery anti-austerity protests, the embattled prime minister, George Papandreou, said that his crisis-hit government would do whatever it took to avert bankruptcy.

He rejected suggestions that Greece could leave the eurozone. "These scenarios are not serious," he said. "For a country to leave any country – I'm not necessarily talking about Greece – it will create a domino effect, a pressure on other countries, and will remain as a wound, if not the beginning of the break-up of the entire system."

Inspectors from the EU and IMF, tasked with monitoring Greece's eligibility for fresh aid under a €110bn bailout programme, abruptly suspended a visit to Athens this month in a dispute over whether further austerity policies were needed. They are now expected to return in the coming days after Olli Rehn, the EU's monetary affairs commissioner, said that the new measures went "a long way in meeting the fiscal targets".

Europe's debt drama escalated last week, sending markets into a tailspin on both sides of the Atlantic, after the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, said that a sixth, €8bn instalment of aid would not be released unless the Greeks "actually do" what they promised by enacting reforms to modernise the economy. In an ominous twist to a saga that has stalked the continent for nearly two years, reports abounded that Berlin had begun taking steps to shore up German banks in the event that Athens failed to meet its debt obligations.

Anxiety in the eurozone also mounted on Friday after the resignation of Jürgen Stark, director of the European Central Bank, who had been sceptical about buying Italian and Spanish bonds.

Talk of an imminent Greek exit from the eurozone was rife as the country's borrowing rates hit stratospheric highs. Without further aid, officials say Athens will be unable to pay public sector salaries and pensions in October.

"Greece has succeeded in achieving the biggest financial support on the face of the planet," said Papandreou, referring to successive bailouts the country has been promised over the past 16 months. "If we are true to our word, to what is required of us [by creditors], there will be no more measures," he insisted.

Admitting that barely 25,000 Greeks declared salaries of more than €100,000 a year, the finance minister said the country needed to raise about €2bn to meet the 2011 budget deficit target.