by Dan Alexe Greece repaid a roughly 450 million euro loan installment to the International Monetary Fund due Thursday and won extra emergency lending for its banks on Thursday — easing concerns, for now, of a potential default as Athens faces a cash crunch. However, it remains unclear whether Athens can satisfy skeptical creditors on economic reforms before it runs out of money. Eurozone partners gave Greece six working days to improve a package of proposed reforms in time for finance ministers of the currency bloc to consider whether to release more funds to keep the country afloat when they meet on April 24. The IMF debt stems from Greece's international bailout, under which the country was extended 240 billion euros in rescue loans from other eurozone countries and the IMF to prevent bankruptcy. Athens' growing financial problems had renewed fears the country might miss the IMF payment and even have to leave the eurozone. Greece's new left wing-led government has been locked in negotiations with creditors since winning elections in January on pledges to abolish the deeply resented budget austerity measures required by the rescue program. The creditors are insisting on the reforms, however, and want an agreement on them before they unfreeze Greece's rescue loans, which have been on hold since August. A last installment of the bailout worth 7.2 billion euros is pending. Athens submitted a 26-page list of planned reforms last week but euro zone officials said they lacked key details and proper assessments of the financial implications. The officials said trust was so low that ministers would want to see legislation going through the Greek parliament, not just promises, before they released more funds. Varoufakis accused the euro zone of inflicting toxic medicine on his country, and starving it of cash. "Tragically we find ourselves today in a similar situation," he told an economic conference. "As a finance minister ... in order to create the liquidity which is necessary to see these negotiations through hopefully to a sustainable solution, I have to make the same request that we are allowed to issue T-bills over and above a certain limit to create the liquidity necessary to see us through to the end of the month or the next month or June, so as to be able to redeem payments to the former troika -- to the IMF in this case." A secret memorandum drafted by the finance ministry of Finland, one of the most hardline creditor countries, raised the prospect of Greece effectively being pushed out of the euro zone if fails to meet obligations under its 240 billion euro bailout program. The newspaper Helsingin Sanomat quoted the memo, dated March 27, as saying Helsinki must be prepared for the possibility that Greece would run out of cash before the end of June. Greece is unable to tap the international bond market for funds due to sky-high borrowing rates that reflect a lack of confidence in the country being able to repay its debts. It has been surviving on its rescue loans since mid-2010, and the new government won a four-month extension to the main, European part of its bailout in February. Under the extension agreement, Athens must present a series of fiscal measures to reform its economy that meet the approval of its creditors at the European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF. Authorities are hoping for a final agreement later this month, when finance ministers from eurozone countries meet on April 24 in Latvia.
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