ANKARA, September 28./TASS/. Russia and Turkey will continue work towards removing barriers to mutual trade, the lifting of most restrictions in supplies of Turkish agricultural products to the Russian market has already increased their imports by 60%, President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday after talks with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

"We will continue taking joint moves on a reciprocal basis to remove barriers on the way to the development of trade-investment cooperation," Putin said. He said that due to the activity of concerned agencies of the two countries "practically all existing restrictions on supplies to Russia of Turkish agricultural products" have been lifted. "As a result, their imports from Turkey in the first half of this year grew 58.7%," Putin said.

He thanked President Erdogan and other participants in the Thursday talks for "a businesslike and very constructive conversation". "I believe that today’s meeting was very useful and rather productive," he added.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on the sidelines of the talks earlier on Thursday that work to restart supplies of Turkish tomatoes was underway. He said representatives of the two countries’ agricultural ministries and supervisory agencies stayed in constant touch and the decision was close.