DOES TRAINING REALLY MATTER TO THE RURAL POOR BORROWERS IN BANGLADESH? A CASE STUDY ON BRAC DAVID HILTON 1 *, KAZI TANVIR MAHMUD 2 , GOLAM MOHAMMAD SHAMSUL KABIR 3 and ASIF PARVEZ 4 1 CIRDAP, Dhaka, Bangladesh 2 Department of Economics, Southeast University, Banani, Dhaka, Bangladesh 3 Department of Fisheries, Dhaka, Bangladesh 4 Department of Human Resource Management, Faculty of Business Administration, American International University-Bangladesh (AIUB), Dhaka, Bangladesh Abstract: The goal of this study was to assess the effect of training programme on the healthcare expenses of the households under BRAC’s microcredit programme. This study showed that training played a significant role in improving the healthcare expenditure of the household. Other socioeconomic variables such as household income, family size, age of the borrower, non- institutional loan received by borrowers, amount of microcredit received from BRAC by borrowers, amount of loan instalment and distance of rural market from the borrowers’ house were also appeared as the key determinants of households’ healthcare expenditure. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Keywords: training; microcredit; healthcare; expenditure; Bangladesh 1 INTRODUCTION One of the basic needs of human life is to have healthcare facility. Every citizen of a country has the right to enjoy proper healthcare services. Therefore, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have emphasised on the healthcare issues. In line with the MDGs, Government of Bangladesh (GoB) is committed to ensure healthcare facilities for all citizens of the country. Since the independence in 1971, GoB has been implementing different types of healthcare programmes by establishing partnership with the non-government organisations (NGOs), donor agencies and other stakeholders of the *Correspondence to: David Hilton, CIRDAP, Dhaka-1000, Bangladesh. E-mail: davidhiltonbapi@gmail.com Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Journal of International Development J. Int. Dev. (2015) Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/jid.3133