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Johannesburg - The 2014 Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) presented by Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene is not radical in any way, Numsa said on Thursday.
"It does not propose, nor lay the foundation, for changes in the structure of the economy, including its ownership patterns," National Union of Metalworkers of SA general secretary Irvin Jim said.
"The MTBPS is self-contradictory. It recognises the plight of the majority of South Africans, but continues to rely on the same neo-liberal Gear/NDP medicine that has sustained pinning the working class and rural poor down into mass poverty."
Nene presented the MTBPS in parliament on Wednesday.
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The Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) plan was introduced in 1996 to address high inflation, declining gross domestic profit and a large fiscal deficit and transform South Africa into an outward-looking, competitive economy.
Last week, the Inkatha Freedom Party said Gear had disappeared "like dew in the morning sun". It predicted the same fate for the National Development Plan (NDP), which seeks to eliminate poverty and reduce inequality in South Africa by 2030.
Jim said neo-liberalism had strengthened its grip on South Africa, and the working class had to resist it.
"No amount of neo-liberal capitalists tinkering with national budgets will eliminate the mass poverty, nationwide structural unemployment and extreme and painful inequalities mostly affecting the black and African working class, and rural masses," he said.
"In the past 20 years finance ministers have come and gone, but the neo-liberal capitalist framework has remained intact."
Jim said like previous budgets, Nene's plan failed to set appropriate and redistributive macroeconomic parameters within which most South Africans could have their lives changed for the better.
* Visit Fin24's Mini Budget Special for all the news, views and analysis.
