After weeks of uncertainty about the course the country would pursue

Hi pratishtha1210,

We should consider the meaning as well. The modifier after the comma (pledging...) gives us more information about "officials reached a revised agreement with the International Monetary Fund". In other words, it tells us what that agreement involved. Here's option C:

1. ... officials reached a revised agreement with the International Monetary Fund, pledging to enforce substantially greater budget discipline than originally promised and to keep inflation below ten percent

This tells us that they promised to do two things. If we try to look at pledging and keeping as being parallel, it'd look like this (option B):

2. ... officials reached a revised agreement with the International Monetary Fund, pledging the enforcement of substantially greater budget discipline than originally promised and keeping inflation below the ten percent figure

But if we say "X reached an agreement with Y, keeping inflation below Z", it sounds as if the act of reaching an agreement alone was enough to get to Z. It's clearly not that easy to keep inflation in check (as many central banks are finding out ), so that's not the meaning we want. Instead, we should go for "X reached an agreement with Y, promising to do Z".
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Hello pratishtha1210,

We hope this finds you well.

Having gone through the question and your query, we believe we can resolve your doubt.

In this sentence, the "enforce" and "keep" verbs are the two actions that the officials pledged to do; as such, it is these two that must be parallel; remember, two elements should only be parallel if they play the same role in the sentence.

If "keeping" is made parallel with "pledging" the meaning we get is that by reaching a revised agreement with the International Monetary Fund, officials both pledged to enforce substantially greater budget discipline and, practically, kept inflation below ten percent.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team
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I’m not sure whether GMAC has considered this type of writing as “unidiomatic.” However, within the realm of professional writing, “which”, generally, is used in two restrictive modifier situations of which I am aware. (I just used one 😄)


“Let it be noted that there are two exceptions to the use of “THAT” to introduce a defining clause.

One is a situation when the demonstrative THAT and the relative THAT come together, as in this sentence:

The latent opposition to rearming Germany is as strong as THAT THAT has found public expression.

Idiomatically, the expression should be changed to THAT WHICH.”

In other words, the construction “that which” may not necessarily be a grammatical error in this sentence correction problem.

“The second exception is the situation in which the relative pronoun follows a Preposition:

of which

for which

about which

etc.”

The bottom line:

“that which” isn’t necessarily a “wrong” construction.

In this sentence correction problem, it seems as if it is another construction thrown in to distract the unwary test taker from the easier errors present in the sentence.

If I were to see “that which” used in a similar manner to how the author used the construction in this problem, I would not immediately use the construction as a basis to eliminate the answer choice.

Unless the OE has specifically stated “that which” is “clumsy” or “awkward” or one of the other adjectives GMAC enjoys using………




Posted from my mobile device

After weeks of uncertainty about the course the country would pursue to stabilize its troubled economy, officials reached a revised agreement with the International Monetary Fund, pledging the enforcement of substantially greater budget discipline as that which was originally promised and to keep inflation below ten percent.


- After (prep) weeks of uncertainty (pp)
- about the course (pp)
- the country (sub) would (future) pursue (with the intention) to stabilize (infinitive) its (country's) troubled economy, (dependent clause)

officials (sub - p) reached a revised agreement (verb - past) with the International Monetary Fund
- , pledging (comma + ing - result of the verb - reaching agreement) the enforcement of substantially greater (used for uncountable where the noun is number) budget (since budget is number - greater is fine) discipline
as (than used be used here)
- that (referring to budget) which (more about budget) was originally promised (past verb)
and
to keep inflation below ten percent. (not-parallel - reflects intention)

error - than and parallelism

(B) the enforcement of substantially greater budget discipline than originally promised and keeping inflation below the ten percent figure

pleadging and keeping

does it mean to say that after uncertain times the agreement is resulting in keeping the rates below? NO. Than is corrected here

(C) to enforce substantially greater budget discipline than originally promised and to keep inflation below ten percent
pledging - to enforce and to keep - showcases the intention

(D) to enforce substantially greater budget discipline than that which was originally promised and keeping inflation less than the ten percent figure
less than

(E) to enforce substantially greater budget discipline as that which was originally promised and to keep inflation less than ten percent
less is used for uncountable - percent is uncountable. below is more direct.

dear egmat, egmat
GMATNinjaTwo, VeritasKarishma, MartyTargetTestPrep, AndrewN,VeritasPrepBrian,GMATRockstar
KarishmaB

I am curious what's the difference between less then 10% and below 10%

thanks in advance.

have a nice day.

Hello zoezhuyan,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, "less than 10 percent" and "below 10 percent" are synonymous; they both convey the exact same meaning; "below 10 percent" is just slightly more concise.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team
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