Excluding food prices, China's CPI edged up 1.6 percent.
Wang forecast that China's economy will expand by 7.8 percent in 2012 and that the CPI will reach around 2.8 percent for the entire year, well below the government's target of keeping inflation under 4 percent.
"A combination of low inflation and modest economic growth is surely a desirable outcome for China in the difficult year of 2012," according to Wang.
In the first 11 months, the CPI grew 2.7 percent year on year on average, marking a decline from the 3.3-percent rise in the first half of the year.
Wang said he believes the CPI will pick up in 2013, but not dramatically. "Consumption and investment will maintain mild growth next year, which will prevent the economy from overheating and be conducive to controlling inflation."
The NBS said in the same release that China's producer price index (PPI), which measures inflation at the wholesale level, fell 2.2 percent year on year in November.
It marked the ninth straight month of decline after the PPI dropped in March for the first time since December 2009.
However, the decline was smaller than the 2.8-percent decrease in October, indicating that the economy has been stabilizing.
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