Enticing the Asian tigers to sink their claws into the Scottish economy was supposed to be an endlessly pleasant and beneficial experience. Now that the claws are being withdrawn and the feline roars are subsiding to a purr the experience has become, paradoxically, painful and embarrassing. Painful for the many people in lowland Scotland who have seen their hopes of future sustained employment in the sunrise industries dashed or, worse still, who have suddenly been thrown out of what they had been led to believe were secure jobs. Painful, too, for the indigenous hi-tech companies which have lost domestic orders to foreign companies subsidised by the Government to set up in Scotland.

Embarrassing, excruciatingly so, for a government which has learned that another inward investment has turned out to be much less major than had been trumpeted, by Ministers among others. To be fair, New Labour alone cannot be blamed for this deeply worrying trend. Scotland's inward investment strategy was at its most profligate under the Tories when the then Secretary of State, plain Michael Forsyth, went for broke for political gain to bring South Korean computer chip manufacturer Hyundai and the promise of thousands of jobs to Fife. Throwing money at Hyundai was a shameless strategy. No attempt was made to justify the expenditure ahead of the deal. That was to happen in the glow of rapidly-expanding employment opportunities at the plant. But we find only kindling. Very few jobs have been created and, in the highly unlikely event of the full quota emerging, they will have cost at least

#86,500 each.

New Labour in opposition was not slow to lambast the strategy. Government, however, is a different matter and Ministers have been more than happy to follow the Tory inward investment lead. They, too, sought to make the ''jobs boost'' headlines when Taiwanese electronics company Lite-On was signed up to make computer monitors in Lanarkshire (cost to the taxpayer #20,000 a job). But for ''jobs boost'' read ''jobs flight'' with the axeing of 250 posts and the transfer of most production back to Taiwan. The retrenchment must also pose questions about the prospects for the linked Chungwa factory, despite assurances to the contrary from that company.

Scotland's inward investment strategy is clearly unravelling. To be fair to the Government, there are huge external extenuating factors: the strong pound affecting the worldwide competitiveness of the inward investors' British-made goods and the febrile cost-cutting in businesses throughout Asia caused by the region's economic crisis. And these new manufacturing jobs are mainly at the low-tech assembly end of the sector, one which is particularly vulnerable to market conditions, for instance a collapse in the price of computer chips. Given all these factors and their unmanageable potential to add to the risk quota, it is surely all the more important that proper assessments are made, and indeed that there is a sensible, coherent strategy in place, before the pitch is made.

Locate in Scotland has done a superb job, at least the equal of its cut-throat competitors, in packaging bids to capture capricious mobile capital and its army of big-earning advisers. But it has been done within too narrow a set of objectives, chief of which sometimes seems to be: secure the promise of the jobs and damn the consequences. That is not good enough. The future of Scotland's manufacturing sector is at issue and when our domestic hi-tech suppliers warn that their competitiveness is being compromised by subsidised incomers they should be listened to. In fact, the Government should lend an ear to everyone with a stake in manufacturing and do it formally, coolly, and rationally with a review of the purpose and efficacy of inward investment. With the recent launch of a Scottish Affairs Select Committee inquiry into what is surely a tarnished inward investment effort the timing could

hardly be more opportune.