January 4, 2000 Web posted at: 9:42 a.m. EST (1442 GMT) by Judi Hasson

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(IDG) -- Governments and companies worldwide spent $200 billion to prevent a Year 2000 catastrophe, Y2K chief John Koskinen said at an early morning news conference.

Koskinen told reporters that the United States has spent $100 billion since it began trying to solve the problem in 1995. He said the rest of the world spent an additional $100 billion.

Koskinen said the federal governmentās tab topped $8.5 billion to prepare the agencies for the Year 2000 rollover.

While Koskinen, whose steadfast optimism was a constant throughout the government's

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Y2K sites around the world

four-year battle against the clock to fix computers for the Year 2000 problem, said it was too early to declare victory over the computer glitch, he said he was "pleasantly surprised" by the lack of computer problems worldwide. "We expected we'd see more problems."

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However, Koskinen warned that more problems could surface when businesses opened on Monday morning and powered up their computers.