How to turn around a salted fish 咸鱼翻身

When the Prime Minister announced that the government is going to provide free e-mail accounts to all Malaysian aged 18 and above, the first thing that came into my mind was; what for? Most of the working adults will be given the e-mails by their employers and if you ask around, those youngsters could have easily more than one free e-mail account registered with Yahoo or Google.

As what commented by the Chief Minister of Penang, why free e-mails? Would it be better if the government can provide free access to internet? Then ordinary households can save some money on internet access. Then the PM mentioned that it will be a private initiative as the government is not using public fund for this project.

The second thing came to my mind, who is this private company and how is it going to benefit from this free project.

It turns out that Tricubes, a GN3 company listed at ACE, is going to spearhead this 1-Malaysian Email project that will cost about RM50mil private investment that includes the development of a web portal as a one-stop centre for government services such as social networking, checking of bills online and payments. I don’t know what is this GN3 stands for but apparently it indicates that this company is not in a good financial condition.

Immediately after the Prime Minister announced this project, the share price of Tricubes, which was earlier half-dead at half a cent per share shot up almost 400 over % to about 31.5 sen as at yesterday. Those shareholders or those insiders who knew about this project who could have bought the cheap shares beforehand and now stand to make a big fortune. Imagine making 400% return over a week, it is as though money is dropping from the sky.

Nothing is free in this world, if you want to strike a lottery; you first need to spend money to buy a ticket. This 1-Malaysia Email project seems to be very noble on a bright side but we don’t know on the other side, how much money have been scooped by those involved through the so-called legal mean of speculating the share market.