The French cabinet on Wednesday agreed to pursue a tax on financial transactions that Paris hopes will eventually be adopted by other European countries.

The project, touted by President Nicolas Sarkozy as a tool against the eurozone debt crisis, will see a 0.1 percent tax on buying shares belonging to firms with a French headquarters and more than one billion euros in capital.

The French finance ministry estimates the tax, which if passed by parliament would take effect on August 1, will bring in 1.1 billion euros ($1.45 billion) annually to state coffers.

The project will also include a 0.01 tax on naked Credit Default Swaps -- a bet that a country will default on its debt -- and on high-frequency trading.

France and Germany are pushing for a Europe-wide tax on financial transactions to help state coffers suffering from the eurozone debt crisis but Sarkozy said Paris would go ahead first if others were not ready.

French Finance Minister Francois Baroin signalled on Tuesday that nine eurozone governments -- Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain -- were ready to press ahead with such a tax.

This comes in the face of fierce opposition to an EU-wide tax from Britain, whose Prime Minister David Cameron said during a recent EU summit that French banks would up and move to the City of London to escape the tax.

The tax was among a series of proposals recently put forward by Sarkozy to boost France's ailing economy as he faces a tough battle for re-election against Socialist candidate Francois Hollande in an April presidential vote.

Another of the measures, a sales-tax increase that will be used to lower payroll charges for employers, was also approved by the cabinet on Wednesday.