China's real estate prices rose at the fastest pace in nearly two years in February, official data showed Wednesday, as Beijing pledged to step up efforts to cool the red-hot property market.

Prices in 70 major cities in China increased by 10.7 percent year-on-year in February, the National Bureau of Statistics said, marking the biggest on-year increase for a single month since March 2008.

That topped a 9.5 percent jump in residential and commercial real estate prices in January.

Premier Wen Jiabao last week singled out the issue of runaway prices as a top government priority, saying Beijing would crack down on illegal practices aimed at driving up prices to ensure the "steady and sound development" of the property market.

"We will resolutely curb the precipitous rise of housing prices in some cities and satisfy people's basic need for housing," Wen said Friday in an address to open the country's annual session of parliament.

Massive bank lending in 2009 has triggered fears that the cash flood has fed a spending spree by property speculators.

Housing prices rose by 13 percent year-on-year in February, 1.7 percentage points faster than the increase in January, the statistics bureau said, underlining concerns that prices were rising out of the reach of many Chinese.

Property sales in the first two months of the year soared 70.2 percent to 411.6 billion yuan from the same period last year, it said.

In an effort to rein in fast rising prices, Beijing has been restricting lending, requiring buyers of second homes to put up a down payment of at least 40 percent, and hiking interest rates on mortgage loans.

The latest figures come after the country's housing minister predicted soaring prices would rise further in 2010 and beyond as the nation develops and as local officials push property sales as a revenue source.

"I think this year the housing market will progress at a steady pace," Jiang Weixin said this week at a briefing on the sidelines of the NPC.

"My prediction is that the upward pressure on housing prices will remain great for the next 20 years because demand will be huge due to rapid urbanisation and industrialisation and because our land is limited," he added.

"Therefore we face huge price pressure."