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Greece missed its €305m (£218m) payment to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Friday in a show of defiance as a deal between Athens and its creditors remains out of reach.  The country invoked a rule created by the IMF in the 1970s that allows it to bundle all of its €1.6bn payments due this month into one.  In a statement, Gerry Rice, the IMF's chief spokesman, said: “The Greek authorities have informed the Fund today that they plan to bundle the country’s four June payments into one, which is now due on June 30.  “Under an Executive Board decision adopted in the late 1970s, country members can ask to bundle together multiple principal payments falling due in a calendar month (payments of interest cannot be included in the bundle). The decision was intended to address the administrative difficulty of making multiple payments in a short period." The last request made to the IMF to bundle payments was Zambia in the mid 1980s.  The Greek finance ministry, which is led by Yanis Varoufakis, said in a statement: "After four months of negotiations, creditor institutions submitted proposals which can’t solve the riddle of the economic crisis caused by the policies implemented in the last five years." The move to delay repayment is likely to have come as a surprise to the Fund. Hours before the announcement, Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, described payment bundling by Greece as not on the cards.