, April 18 -- Bangladesh's decades of strong economic growth came at a cost of overlooked governance failures that eventually contributed to political upheaval, economists warned at the opening session of the 9th SANEM Annual Economists Conference on Friday night.

Speaking through an online keynote address session, economists Shanta Devarajan, Professor, Georgetown University and Kunal Sen, Director, The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) said rapid economic growth, when it masks underlying governance weaknesses, ultimately breeds political instability, declining investment and economic slowdown.

In his keynote titled 'The Costs of Denial,' Devarajan argued that many developing count...