BEIJING, Jan 22 (Reuters) - China's annual consumer price inflation slowed to 1.2 percent in December from 2.4 percent in November, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Thursday.
That compared with economists' forecast of a 1.7 percent rise in the CPI index.
Ma Jiantang, commissioner of the NBS, gave the December figure at a news conference. In a statement ahead of the news conference, the statistics agency had given the full-year figure for CPI of 5.9 percent, but left out the December figure. [nBJB000542] (Reporting by Zhou Xin; Editing by Jason Subler and Ken Wills)