Greece IMF Payment
Greece is due to make two multimillion euro payments to the IMF in May Reuters

Greece will be able to meet its payment obligations until June at least, according to Greek and eurozone officials, but any deal to unlock fresh financial aid remains a distance prospect.

Greece has been tasked with providing a comprehensive list of economic reforms to its creditors, as a precondition to releasing the next instalment of the country's international bailout.

Euro-watchers had suggested that a Greek default could occur in the coming weeks, as Athens struggles to pay government wages and pensions, as well as make payments to the International Monetary Fund. Greece is due to make two payments to the IMF in May, totalling €950m (£678m, $1,019m).

Greece now looks set to make all of these payments on time, after the Greek government passed a decree that ordered local municipal governments to transfer their cash reserves to an account at the Greek central bank.

The move provoked a revolt among local government leaders on Tuesday, who accused the central government of taking money that did not belong to them.

The Eurogroup, a collective of finance ministers representing each of the nation states across the single-currency bloc, is due to meet on Friday (24 April) in Riga but that meeting is not expected to bear much fruit. Greece is not expected to present its economic reform proposals, meaning it will not unlock bailout cash.

Eurozone officials have described negotiations with Greece as painstakingly slow and said that creditors had yet to gain access to the information they need to make a full assessment of Greece's public finances.

The Eurogroup Working Group (EWG), comprising of the deputy ministers to those in the full Eurogroup, said that despite these issues, talk of a Greek default was premature.

"The liquidity situation in Greece is already a little tight, but it should be sufficient into June," EWG chairman Thomas Wieser told an Austrian broadcaster.

"It is my central belief that the negotiations with Greece can still be successfully completed," Wieser said.

"The clock is ticking. There won't be a new list in Riga, but over the course of May it must finally be reached."

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is due to meet Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, on the sidelines of a European Union summit on Thursday (23 April).