Uzbekistan's foreign trade turnover was about 9.4 billion U.S. dollars and increased by 27 percent over the same period of 2018, according to a report of the Uzbek statistics committee published on Thursday.

The Central Asian nation's export amounted to 4.1 billion U.S. dollars, and import stood at 5.2 billion U.S. dollars, with a trade deficit of 1.1 billion U.S. dollars, the report said.

The data showed that China became the first trade partner of Uzbekistan in the first three months of this year, while Russia came the second and Kazakhstan the third.