Greek banks hold about €11bn in Greek T-bills, and Athens must roll over two T-bills totalling €2.4bn in mid-April.

“The Greeks are one minute away from midnight,” said Mujtaba Rahman, head of European analysis at the Eurasia Group consultancy. “The government is at the edge of the precipice and may well go over.”

In a sign that the cash crunch has become more desperate, officials at Greece’s state healthcare service, were asked on Tuesday to hand over a €50m reserve for paying arrears owed to medical workers.