MARK Jones concedes there is two sides to the $21 million windfall that was announced for country racing in NSW on Tuesday, but the Dubbo trainer says he is excited at the prospect of getting better horses into his stables.

An increase in the minimum TAB prize money from $15,000 per race to $20,000 was the main part of the announcement made by deputy premier and racing minister Troy Grant and Racing NSW supremos John Messara and Peter V'Landys in Dubbo, but it is the emphasis on country racing as a whole that has Jones confident about the code's future.

The overall increase backs up planned 'Showcase' meetings that are part of the new package and feature races with $30,000 in prize money, the very popular Highway races in Sydney most Saturdays worth $40,000 and the Country Championships that features $100,000 heats and a $400,000 final at Randwick next April

With a small team in work at Dubbo, Jones said the potential is there to not only get new owners involved in the industry, but get old owners back, and he added he isn't afraid of taking on a potential influx of city and provincial trainers looking for an 'easy kill' and some decent money.

"The same thing happened in Victoria and the major trainers travel all over the place down there looking for wins. At the end of the day everyone is in it for the prize money to try and get a return on their investment," Jones said.

"But Victoria is a lot smaller than NSW. The Hawkesbury and Warwick Farm trainers take their horses to Bathurst and Orange because it isn't far for them to go but it's a lot harder to put them on a float to Dubbo or Narromine and get the same results.

"We already have to compete with them at some places, but hopefully with these increases in prize money it attracts some owners to spend some money and all of us bush trainers can end up with better quality horses.

"It might also encourage some of the owners with horses being trained at city rates and racing for bush money to send their horses to a country trainer in the first place and if they can measure up, then look at the city after that.

"At the end of the day if you have good enough horses you can take on the provincial and city trainers, because they don't send their topliners out to the bush anyway."

Jones said with Racing NSW finally placing some genuine emphasis on country racing, he would love to see the jigsaw puzzle completed with a review of the benchmarking system and programming.

"The programming is the only area that needs to be fixed now," Jones said.

"For so long it seemed like Sydney got $100 and we got 5c, but now we have that influx of money all we need is programming and benchmarking that allows horses to go through their grades and win a few races.

"As it is now, if you have a horse that wins two or three races they're stuffed in the bush because they get lumped with big weights against better horses or you have to take them all the way to Sydney and that isn't easy.

"They end up racing out of their grade and costing the owners and trainers money because they spend so long running in races they can't win.

"If they can sort that out, change that system so that horses can go through their grades and genuinely be open class when they get to open class then things will be pretty good in the bush."