Greece has chance to skip next loan payment – media

"There is the possibility of putting together several payments that Greece would need to make to the IMF in the course of June and then just make one payment," a senior eurozone official close to the talks with Athens told Reuters.

The struggling country is due to pay the IMF €300 million on June 5 as the first of four June tranches totaling €1.6 billion.

READ MORE: 'Can't Pay, Won't Pay': Greece has no money to make IMF payment, interior minister says

However, Greece could only skip payment if it provides markets and citizens with a trustworthy plan of a funding deal, because missing the payment could instigate an alarm on the market and a bank run.

While Greece intends to liberalize its economy, amend its pension system and run a reasonable primary budget surplus, its creditors are demanding oppressively high surplus targets, making Athens’ goal unreachable, said Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis on Tuesday.

"Our government cannot accept - and will not accept - a cure that, over a five-year period, has proved worse than the disease," the finance minister added, referring to austerity measures that dragged the country’s economy into years of recession.

READ MORE: ‘I wish we had drachma, never entered monetary union’ – Greek finance minister

Last week, Greek Interior Minister Nikos Voutsis said the country wouldn’t be able to pay the next installment of €300 million to the IMF on June 5 unless it received extra financial aid from creditors.

Athens owes billions of euros to the troika of international lenders – the IMF, the ECB and the European Commission - and is unable to pay without a further €7.2-billion bailout.

[KA1]Hyperlink to the original Reuters story