Following interview of Bhai Ali Asgar Moochala, Singapore, by Mudar Patherya:

I am a businessman based in Singapore. My company enjoys a growing presence in the import of specialized equipment from blue-chip multinationals. While most of the equipment is sold within Singapore, there is the stray instance of the locally sold material being re-exported out of Singapore by our customers.

Some years ago, one of our local customers ordered a large quantity of equipment. We sent our first consignment; apparently everything was exported. We were not exporting; they were. We were not even marketing on the premise that it would be re-exported; but it was.

As it turned out, two members in my company got to know about this. But once the multi-national got wind of what was happening, it sent us a note asking that no more equipment be sold to our existing customer as they did not want their (multinational’s) market presence to be disturbed in any of the regional countries.

We had the option to do two things – let our customer down by canceling the contract or complete our consignment (as we had been contracted) but only after removing all tracking details. Meanwhile, the local customer ordered another large quantity of large equipment. We were in a dilemma.

So we approached Huzurala for direction. My arzi was carefully worded; it was reasonably vague without going into any of the specifics and yet it asked for unambiguous advice. Since one had an experience in tendering arzis in the past, one expected a broad and generalized solution. Something like ‘Khuda taala sehel kari aapey’.

We were surprised. Huzurala’s advice was specific: “Continue what you have been doing, but only more carefully.”

The amazing point is that this pertinent advice could only have come from someone who knew precisely what was happening; even more surprisingly, we later discovered that despite our detailed attention, we had overlooked some tracking details that could have been potentially dangerous for us. And attention to this was being drawn by someone sitting thousands of miles away!

Surprising. And not surprising actually.

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