PARIS: European companies are pushing up prices as supply disruptions lift costs and hamper their ability to match surging demand, said executives gathered for a conference this weekend in southern France.

       The bosses of industrial firms including tyre company Michelin and construction materials producer Saint-Gobain say they’re facing scarce supplies, transport bottlenecks and staff shortages in the wake of the pandemic, and that they expect consumer-price inflation to pick up as a result.

       “We usually have one or two operational crises to handle at a time on supplies – right now we have 23,” said Florent Menegaux, CEO of Michelin, told Bloomberg TV. “The entire supply chain has been disturbed.”

       The concerns raised at the annual Aix-en-Provence conference highlight the uncertainty surrounding Europe’s rebound from the deepest peacetime recession in a century.

       Shops, restaurants and leisure facilities are finally reopening as vaccinations gain pace across Europe, but uneven progress in combating the coronavirus around the world means supply chains are damaged and workers hard to find.

       European Central Bank (ECB) president Christine Lagarde, who attended the conference, told France Inter radio that while the eurozone economy is “clearly in a period of recovery” and may reach its pre-pandemic size sooner than expected, current price pressures are “mostly transitory.” — Bloomberg