A housing project in Nanjing, capital of East China's Jiangsu province, Sept 21, 2014. [Photo/Asianewsphoto]

BEIJING - Loans to China's real estate sector continued to rise at a steady pace as the property market began to show signs of recovery, data from the central bank showed Wednesday.

By the end of March, financial institutions in China had lent 22.51 trillion yuan ($3.46 trillion) to the property sector, up 22.2 percent year on year, according to a report from the People's Bank of China (PBOC).

The growth was 1.3 percentage points faster than the rate at the end of 2015, according to the report.

Outstanding loans for real estate development amounted to 5.22 trillion yuan as of the end of March, while loans for individual purchases jumped 25.5 percent to 15.18 trillion yuan, up 2.4 percentage points from the end of 2015.

The data came as China's sluggish housing market started to pick up on the back of a string of government support policies.

Of 70 large and medium-sized cities surveyed in March, 62 saw new home prices increase month on month, up from 47 the previous month, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Monday.