SHANGHAI – Urban property prices in China grew at the fastest pace in close to five years in March, despite repeated pledges by China's top leaders to rein in speculation in the industry and curb runaway prices.

While the real-estate sector is an increasingly important part of China's economy as the government seeks to promote home ownership, Beijing has for several months sought to tackle surging prices and ward off an asset bubble.

The National Bureau of Statistics said Wednesday property prices in 70 of China's large and medium-sized cities increased 11.7% in March from a year earlier, accelerating from February's 10.7% rise. The increase was the largest since July 2005, when the bureau switched to collecting property-price data on 70 cities from 35.

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Prices of newly built residential properties in China rose 14.2% in March from a year earlier.

March was the 10th consecutive month in which urban property prices increased from a year earlier.

"It's not clear that Chinese homebuyers have got the message that the property market needs to slow down," said Brian Jackson, an economist at Royal Bank of Canada. "To convince home buyers that it is fully committed to curbing overheating and reducing bubble risks, Beijing will need to use all of its policy tools, and that most obviously includes higher interest rates."

Prices of newly built residential properties rose 14.2% in March from a year earlier, extending the 13.0% rise in February, the commission said.

Prices in the secondary market rose 9.5% in March from a year earlier, accelerating from February's 8.5% rise.

The statistics bureau said investment in real-estate development, one of the main forms of private investment in China, rose 35.1% in the January-March period to 659.4 billion yuan ($97 billion) from a year earlier. Real-estate-development investment in the January-February period rose 31.1% to 314.4billion yuan.

Housing prices in Hainan province posted the most rapid growth in March, with prices in the provincial capital Haikou rising an average 64.8% from a year earlier while those in the resort city of Sanya rose 57.5% during the period. Prices in Guangzhou, in the southern province of Guangdong, rose 20.3%.

Concerns that home prices in China have grown overly quickly prompted the government to begin tightening lending for property purchases and regulations on land sales late last year.

The measures included the introduction of a minimum downpayment of 50% on land purchases from the government. Local-level governments previously asked developers to put down 20%-30% of the value of the land in such deals, analysts said.

In February, the China Banking Regulatory Commission told trust firms to stop lending to developers for land purchases.

Last month, the CBRC also ordered banks not to issue loans to developers operated by 78 state-owned enterprises that had been ordered by the country's assets regulator to exit the