China's consumer inflation slipped to a five-year low in January, adding to concerns about deflation as growth in the world's second-largest economy slows. Low inflation gives China's central bank more leeway to continue easing monetary policy to deal with a sluggish economy. China's consumer-price index rose 0.8% year-over-year in January, down from a 1.5% on-year rise in December, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed on Tuesday. "This tells us domestic demand is pretty weak," said Xiaoping Ma, an economist at HSBC. "There's no sign of improvement." January's inflation was slightly below market expectations of a 0.9% rise, and the lowest since November 2009, when the CPI was up 0.6%. Economists said the rock-bottom figure could be attributed partly to the Lunar New Year holiday, which came in January in 2014 but in February this year, muddying year-over-year comparisons as it inflated the base last year. But the reading also compounds concerns about deflation, and underlines the weakness of demand in a slowing Chinese economy. The producer-price index, which measures the prices paid to companies at the factory gate, dropped 4.3% year-over-year in January from a year earlier, also the sharpest fall since late 2009. It also follows a 3.3% year-over-year drop in December. That partly reflects soft prices for raw materials on world markets, as well as excess capacity in some of China's key industries and the fallout from a stuttering housing market. In an effort to boost the economy, the People's Bank of China cut banks' reserve requirements earlier this month, after an interest-rate cut in November. marketwatch.