Bloomberg – Mongolia’s government will propose laws to set up a professional horse-racing league and legalize betting to compete for the Chinese gambling market. The government may approach the Hong Kong Jockey Club with a proposal to have jockeys and horses race in Mongolia when they’re not competing in the former British colony, Culture Minister Oyungerel Tsedevdamba said in an e-mail. The Hong Kong horse racing season runs from early September to mid-July.
“Our priority is to make the legal environment for a jockey club operation so that we can have a market share” of the Asian jockey business, Oyungerel said, adding that she hopes to submit the draft in parliament within three months. “Our law is heavily based on Hong Kong Jockey Club rules.”
Legalized gambling would help diversify Mongolia’s resource-reliant economy as prices for commodities such as copper and coal languish at multiyear lows. The Mongolian tugrik touched a record low of 1,796.5 to the dollar before closing at 1,789, while economic growth fell for the second straight year, to 11.7 percent in 2013.
Underscoring the challenges for the economy, Standard & Poor’s today announced it lowered Mongolia’s long-term sovereign rating to B+ from BB-, or four levels below investment grade. Standard & Poor’s cited off-budget spending, weak governance and its “weakened external and debt profiles.”
