In 1999, chancellor Gordon Brown inaugurated a $1.6 billion program of "upgrading British science" and commercializing its products. This was on top of $1 billion invested between 1998-2002. The budgets of Medical Research Council and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council were quadrupled overnight.

The University Challenge Fund was set to provide $100 million in seed money to cover costs related to hiring of managerial skills, securing intellectual property, constructing a prototype or preparing a business plan. Another $30 million went to start-up funding of high-tech, high-risk companies in UK.

According to United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), top 29 industrialized nations invest in R&D more than $600 billion a year. The bulk of this capital is provided by private sector. In United Kingdom, for instance, government funds are dwarfed by private financing, according to British Venture Capital Association. More than $80 billion have been ploughed into 23,000 companies since 1983, about half of them in hi-tech sector. Three million people are employed in these firms. Investments surged by 36 percent in 2001 to $18 billion.

But this British exuberance is a global exception.

Even - white hot - life sciences field suffered an 11 percent drop in venture capital investments last year, reports MoneyTree Survey. According to Ernst & Young 2002 Alberta Technology Report released on Wednesday, Canadian hi-tech sector is languishing with less than $3 billion invested in 2002 in seed capital - this despite generous matching funds and tax credits proffered by many of provinces as well as federal government.

In Israel, venture capital plunged to $600 million last year - one fifth its level in 2000. Aware of this cataclysmic reversal in investor sentiment, Israeli government set up 24 hi-tech incubators. But these are able merely to partly cater to pecuniary needs of less than 20 percent of projects submitted.