As the world emerges from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global economy is seeing some positive indicators for growth, with sustained high demand. The recovery gained traction in 2021 following the introduction of vaccines and reduced protocols related to COVID-19. Strong increases in new orders for all major subsectors indicate that growth will continue in 2022, after industrial production and capacity utilization surpassed pre-pandemic levels in the middle of 2021.
However, market optimism is hampered by major challenges on an unprecedented scale: inconsistent supply, logistics and production bottlenecks, war in Ukraine, fuel prices spiking, and labor shortages. Central banks throughout the world recently announced a wide breadth of policy changes to attempt to curtail the impacts of inflation.