BEIJING - Home prices kept rising at quicker pace in major Chinese cities, underscoring the the government's cooling measures remain imperative, official data showed Friday.

Of a statistical pool of 70 major Chinese cities recorded by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), 53 cities saw home prices increase within 2.2 percent in January from a month earlier. In December, the growth margin is no more than 1.2 percent.

On a year-on-year basis, 53 cities registered rising prices with growth rate drastically up to 4.7 percent, compared with 2.4 percent that recorded in December, NBS said in a statement on its website.