Indians must be willing to swallow some bitter medicine during this phase when India is witnessing progressive growth, finance minister P Chidambaram said.

"We must control inflation, but not at the cost of growth. We are confident that we will be able to curtail the inflation rate, which has been around 6 per cent in the last 12 weeks," he said addressing an event of Corporation Bank in Chennai on Saturday.

The implementation of the monetary and fiscal policies might contain some bitter measures, but they aim for a long-term perspective. The Reserve Bank of India cannot contain the prices of tomatoes. It is a larger issue caused due to the supply-demand chain.

Growth is very important and only with growth, can we have a greater income and thus, greater spending, he added.

"While many are afraid of a 10 per cent GDP (gross domestic product) growth target, I am unhappy that I am unable to target a growth of 12 per cent," he said adding that India can also maintain a constant growth rate like that of Singapore, Thailand and China.

Lauding Corporation Bank for being the first public sector bank to have implemented core banking solutions across all its 905 branches, he urged the other banks to follow suit as well and also to increase lending to education and self-help group sectors segments.

B Sambamurthy, chairman and managing director, Corporation Bank, said, "100 per cent CBS implementation across our network will help our customers save time and also reduce transaction costs."

The bank inaugurated its mobile banking services, which will enable the customers to access their account details through text alerts.

Transactions will also be made possible through mobile phones in a few  months,  Sambamurthy added.