The aim of this study was to examine the moderating effect of political interference in the relationship between ethical practices and internal auditing in predicting procurement performance in Tanzania's parastatal entities. The structured questionnaire was administered to 256 randomly selected department heads out of 712 found in 93 state-owned organizations in the Dar es Salaam Region. Out of the 256 questionnaires distributed to respondents, 241 were returned fully completed and hence suitable for analysis (response rate: 94.1%). Descriptively, the data were summarized using frequency distribution tables, while relationships between variables were analyzed using the Covariance-Based Structural Equation Model (CB-SEM). The CB-SEM findings revealed that political interference had a negative effect on procurement performance. Moreover, political interference had a statistically significant positive moderating effect on internal auditing and ethical practices in predicting procurement performance. For instance, respondents in the high political interference group had a 0.708 higher procurement performance for each unit increase in internal auditing as compared to 0.272 in the low political interference group, even though both were statistically significant at p<0.001. The study recommended that the management of the parastatal organizations should institute effective control mechanisms by ensuring that politicians do not get room to interfere with the procurement process. This study adds to a new body of knowledge, as there are few studies that have studied the determinant of procurement performance, accounting for the moderating effect of political interference in parastatal organizations in sub-Saharan Africa.
