HANOI (AFP) - Southeast Asian businesses must increase investment within the region, to advance efforts towards achieving economic integration by 2015, the ASEAN blocs chief said Thursday. Surin Pitsuwan said that of the 60 billion dollars in foreign direct investment in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 2008, only about 10 billion dollars came from companies within the 10-nation grouping. Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of ASEANs summit in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi, Surin said cross-border investments are crucial to ASEANs efforts to establish an economic community by 2015. Asked about the main challenges, he said: They certainly have to make sure that there will be cross investments among each other... without an increase in ASEAN cross investment among ourselves, integration will not be complete. Surin said ASEAN has to go full force in promoting to ASEAN business enterprises to take advantage of the opportunities, of the space, of the facilities that have been put in place. He said multinational corporations were already taking advantage of ASEAN business opportunities and urged Southeast Asian firms to do so as well. Among the reasons for the low level of intra-ASEAN investment is a lack of awareness of the opportunities and a reluctance to take risks. I think we need to do more campaign. (There is) less awareness and a sense of not willing to take risk, not knowing the terrain, not knowing the environment, he said. Larger multinational corporations have larger networks and larger pools of information so they could survey the landscape better than smaller companies, he added. Indonesian Trade Minister Mari Pangestu told AFP that ASEAN was 75pc on target towards meeting its 2015 goal, with issues on transportation as well as investment and services still to be thrashed out. Economic integration, which aims to transform ASEAN into a single market and manufacturing base by 2015, means tearing down tariff and non-tariff barriers, and building infrastructure links on land, sea and air. ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.