The cancellation of the meeting prompted fury from Athens, with Tsipras calling EU President Donald Tusk on Wednesday to demand a summit of eurozone countries if things didn’t progress on a ministerial level.
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“We have to avoid a situation of renewed uncertainty for Greece”.
Global lenders asked Greece last Friday to prepare a package of additional savings measures which would be passed into law now but implemented only when needed, to make sure the country reaches agreed fiscal targets.
He said the decision to postpone the meeting of euro zone finance ministers to next week or the week after that, depending on progress in negotiations was good, because having a meeting only to announce lack of agreement would send a bad signal.
“Eurogroup chief Jeroen Dijsselbloem has informed Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos that the meeting will take place on May 9”, the government said in a statement.
At stake are more than 5 billion euros (3.88 billion pounds) in financial aid needed to pay International Monetary Fund loans maturing in June and July.
A source with knowledge of the issue told AFP that Greece – labouring under a 311-billion euro-debt mountain – could handle payments without major difficulty until the end of May.
Tsipras’ office said the prime minister would talk with Tusk again Thursday morning.
A senior European official says Greece has failed to reach a deal with bailout lenders before a May 1 target date set by Athens.
Political analysts in Athens said the possibilities of new snap general elections or a referendum cannot be ruled out if the government and the creditors don’t strike a deal soon which can be ratified by the parliament.
But the left-wing government led by Alexis Tsipras has said it will not agree to any “additional actions” to what it had already signed up to last summer.
“Until an agreement is reached and the first review is completed there will be no further disbursements towards Greece”, she said in a note.
The contingency package was “a safeguard to ensure that if anything happens [with the bailout programme], we will have something to trigger to correct it”, an European Union source said on Wednesday.
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“We can not ask Greece to take additional measures”.
