Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan's 2013 Budget would do nothing to address problems facing the country, Cosatu said on Wednesday.

"At the time when our people are occupying the streets demanding better houses, affordable, accessible and safe transport, a new incomes policy to close the apartheid wage gap and growing income inequalities, the budget adopts a neoliberal stance, cutting expenditure by more than R10 billion," the Congress of SA Trade Unions said in a statement.

It was concerned that the "conservative and pro-capital" National Development Plan continued to receive endorsement from the government. The union federation said there was no broad endorsement of the NDP.

"The only other formations to have welcomed this have been pro-business opposition parties and big business. Labour and many other progressives in the country have long realised that this plan is the reinforcement of the status quo in economic terms."

It however welcomed incentives to help the manufacturing sector with, among others, the manufacturing competitiveness enhancement programme.