IMF: Greece to miss Friday's scheduled payment

Paul Davidson | USA TODAY

Greek officials said Thursday the debt-plagued country won't make a 300 million euro loan repayment due Friday, and instead will bundle four scheduled paybacks this month into one by June 30, the International Monetary Fund said Thursday.

Greece owes its creditors -- the IMF, the European Central Bank and the European Commission – a total of about 1.6 billion euros by the end of the month.

Under a rule adopted in the late 1970s, member countries can ask to roll together separate payments due in the same month "to address the administrative difficulty of making multiple payments in a short period," the IMF said.

U.S. stocks, already in the red before the news, sank further afterward. Major indexes were down in the 1% neighborhood as of mid-afternoon.

The request came a day after Greece and its creditors failed to make much headway in the latest round of their protracted bailout discussions. Greece's international creditors have to give their blessing to a Greek reform package before vital bailout loans are released.

Without the money, Greece faces the prospect of going bankrupt.

The delay of Friday's installment "is to buy themselves some time," says Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Global Insight. "They want to give themselves as much room to maneuver as possible."

Only a few hours earlier, IMF chief Christine Lagarde told a Washington news conference audience that she was "confident" Greece would make the Friday payment.

Contributing: Associated Press.