During the course of this recovery, global economic activity has risen strongly and is now back above its pre-crisis level. At the same time, price increases accelerated noticeably and on a broad scale. Multiple factors were behind this acceleration. For one thing, energy prices rebounded as the world economy recovered from the pandemic-induced recession.
Furthermore, new waves of infection disrupted production all over the world, and there were bottlenecks in some areas of the shipping industry. These factors distorted a number of global supply chains, sparking considerable price increases at upstream production stages. Lastly, and importantly, consumption partly shifted from services to goods as a result of the pandemic-related restrictions.